#it can be like just implicit romance

[deliajackson]

I was reading The Atrocity of Sunsets chapter 1 again:

It is a perpollo with fem!Percy alright.

And for some reason my brain went: turn it gay perachel.

And it got wilder:

Percy cosplaying as Wonder Woman and Rachel cosplaying as BatGirl in the last Halloween they had before turning 16.

[margindoodles2407]

we can talk about my views on shipping later but i think there is a trope i've pioneered

and it's almost like forbidden love but. not quite

and it's called "i love you so much and so deeply but the circumstances of our lives have aligned such that we are not supposed to be together, so i am going to willingly sacrifice being in a romantic relationship with you as the ultimate expression of my love and respect for you"

[onewomancitadel]

Considering the treatment Persuasion - Austen's most sensitive novel - received at the hands of Netflix (caustic, dim, and ridiculous), one cannot imagine what will happen to Pride & Prejudice.

The thing critical to the novel is that it doesn't slip into modern romance novel/romance film dynamics. Elizabeth and Darcy equally develop in response to one another; it isn't a "woman fixing man" or "man fixing himself for a woman'" story, but actually about a treatment of the development of moral character partially in response to other (more reductive) novels of manners in the period. In this way, Austen is kind of funny because she's poking fun at her contemporaries as well as society itself.

Though I guess you could probably expand upon how conceivably a really bad Netflix P&P adaptation would rewrite this dynamic into our current archetypal ideal for romance, one in that it's ironic first and foremost. They reflect different anxieties and now, different commercial brands.

The "man fixing himself for a woman" angle is one I see defended a lot from the perspective of fairly harmless romance genre fare, but I am interested in mutual character development, and I don't really like stories where the female character is a saint and the male character is searching for forgiveness at her feet... not interesting to me and not really the sort of gender dynamics I want lol. It's a bit weird, since it's still a Madonna thing, not really that revolutionary (in my view) or indeed edifying. To err is to be human, etc.

I understand though that people approach these texts with their own worldview and that is appreciably relevant... on the one hand I think textual purity matters, on the other hand things always change and become transformed. I just can't expect that Netflix - given their track record - could change P&P in a better way.

[diz-eaze]

please write more modern yandere scara please please please pretty please woth a cherry on top…IM BEGGING YOU i love this so much

; thank u for enabling me to rot over yandere scara nonnie <33 you've heard of cyberstalker scara and roomie scara, so now I'll present to you jealous scara in his most unserious way possible <3

; others; 3rd, 2nd, 1st.

; half serious half silly, not proofread, yandere, freak behavior, implicit afab (y/n) for this one bc of periods, slight nsfw, not proofread so there may be typos !!

some jealous scara thoughts !!

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your phone. literally what does this tiny, rectangular device have that he doesn't (everything)? never mind the fact that he also uses a phone because it's different, he uses his as an archive for everything related to you !! and what about you?? 🤨🤨 what's your excuse for being glued to your phone 24/7 doomscrolling through tiktok and ig reels, huh? sigh. what's the point of life if the huzz (you) don't even use your phone to cyberstalk him back :(. wdym you don't bug his phone to secretly place a tracking app to monitor where he is at all times, wdym you're not spying on the private conversations he has (he literally only talks to his mom). where's the passion, the romance? the dating pool is truly cooked - says scara, as he struggles to form a normal social connection with you without being borderline manic. for both your sake and his, put the phone down <3.

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your tampons/pads/menstual cups. he hates their existence. they are impeding in his life !! why are you using all these products, that cost money btw, when you can use his mouth instead :( he's being serious when he thinks that, like that is genuinely his mindset. in HIS perfect world of delusion, you'd never go outside during your periods and will instead use his mouth like a menstrual deposit while you do your pending work 😭😭. every month he begs to any deity above that you'll finally throw out your feminine products like god PLEASE let him have this (no one is listening to his prayers). please never trust him around your trashcan because he WILL dig that shit up like some fucking raccoon and suck the blood out of it like he's some modern day vampire. he doesn't even care if he gets sick from doing it :(

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your skin products like lotions or face serums. oh to be the toner that you apply to your face day and night, seeping deep into your pores and bringing your skin nutrition and hydration :((( curse this blasted mortal body of his !! why can't he be the one to do that for you !? and don't even get him started on body lotion that you lather into your skin after every shower... sigh. sigh. SIGHHHH. if he was your lotion, he'd moisturize you in record time, btw. at the very least, if he can't be the product himself then at least let him be the one to apply it on your body.

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of the food that enters your mouth. it makes him want to throw up and cry every time he eats with you and watches as the food enters your mouth and goes into your digestive system. he wants to be that so fucking bad it's downright ridiculous. he laughs and makes idle conversation with you outside, but underneath the table he's clenching his fists so hard it's undoubtedly starting to wound. it's fine, he tells himself, but in reality he's so so upset because he badly wants to be entrenched in your saliva and be put through your intestines, too :(. is that not romantic? and don't tell him otherwise.

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your clothes. he's like the wolf tearing his t-shirt meme whenever he thinks about you and encroaches on the fact that you wear clothes just like any other human being :0. he's dramatically slamming his gaming desk over in anger because grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr there are other species that get to be wrapped around your body for a good portion of the day :/ (ignoring the fact that it's literally just pieces of cloth?). he gets even angrier if you wear bras, too, because just let him be the one to hold up your breasts, please. it won't remove his jealousy, but it'll be enough to get him to function again.

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of whoever makes you laugh. like, haha !! nice one !! anyways, what's so funny? :// it wasn't even that good, lol. he'd downplay the other person's jokes SOOO BAD it's highkey pathetic of him. he tries to have this air of 'idgaf' and in his mind he's executing it amazingly but then you take a look at him being so pressed over a goddamn joke and that illusion just shatters completely. he stays up at night replaying the way you laughed at their joke over and over and over again. it's literally his sleep paralysis demon. he could be 58 years old and married to you but he'd still have nightmares about it. he's that bothered. and GOD FORBID you laugh at a meme because now he's deepdiving into a new career (becoming a meme account) and just hoping that he lands on your timeline and hopefully get a chuckle or a hehe out of you or else someone prevent him from pulling the trigger. don't worry diva, why laugh at tiktoks or tweets when you have a jester at your disposal? scara believes that the online world needs to be destroyed and to bring back medieval times because he has to be the only who makes you laugh ok.

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your video games. it's like those stereotypical gamer bf x normie gf relationship except he's not a normie nor is he a girl, but he still acts like a possessive toxic gf who gets insanely insecure over their s/o playing minecraft out of all things. think of the insane levels of jealousy he'll experience if you play games that require playing with other actual people btw. think of valorant, league, overwatch, etc. he'd actually fall to his knees in complete agony. he overhears someone on mic laugh at something you said one time, and when you get home from college classes he's already destroyed your built pc :). how about playing with only him next time, yeah?

modern au yandere scara gets jealous of your friends, especially if that friend has known you longer than he has. there's nothing that can compare to the sheer envy he holds for people who've known you for that long - the lotions, the video games, the clothes don't even hold a candle to this - because there's no greater bliss in his life than your existence and the act of knowing you intimately. and he likes to think that he's the best in that field. the number one researcher, even, so when he gets to know more about the people you surround yourself with and see some that have known you since childhood.... it leaves a heavy weight in his chest. his fingers uncontrollably itch. he gets his dreadful cloud of gloom over his head. it's not fair. he should've been the one to know you since preschool instead of your friend, right? ugh, if only he had the premonition to see into the future !! don't let him be alone with your friends because you'll end up experiencing friendship break-ups with no rhyme or reason 😭😭😭

[fatalism-and-villainy]

This is a bigger problem in the fanfic realm as well, because I have recently frequently been running into the problem of being drawn in by shippy fanfics that involve things like captivity, enslavement, and other scenarios that inherently constitute reduced autonomy and thus dubious (at best) consent, but actively refuse to engage with those implications.

And it's frustrating, because these are scenarios that I find compelling, and that have the potential for very rich emotional work. I like the juxtaposition of physical pleasure or emotional fulfillment with feelings of fear and violation, and the shame and self-blame that those feelings bring about. And I like digging into an experience of love and desire that is frighteningly selfish in its negligence towards the personhood of its object.

But I see so many of these fics that are explicitly framed as seeking to avoid these story elements - they'll have an author's note or something at the beginning with something like "I know this is problematic, but I've tried to mitigate the dubcon elements as much as I can!" And I find this... deeply frustrating! Because it's seeking to ameliorate the very dynamics that make this sort of story interesting to me!

And by the refusal to engage with the inherently nonconsensual aspects of these premises, I'm not necessarily referring to fantasy romance plot scenarios in which the characters overcome the violence of their initial dynamic to live happily ever after in a more egalitarian relationship. I can understand that these plots are living inside a sort of non-diegetic BDSM fantasy bubble, and they are still engaging with and deriving their initial eroticism and intimacy from violence implicit in their premises, while using the fantasy aspect to mitigate the actual "realistic" consequences of that violence. (I read some danmei novels that did this in ways I found really enjoyable; I think Hannigram also arguably fits into this mold in certain ways, especially considering that it is a fantasy about the parts of abuse that can feel intensely thrilling and that can make you feel recognized and known in ways no one else can.) What I'm referring to is, well, a refusal to engage at all with that violence and violation; an implementation of these premises that feels like just another pretext for introducing the characters and getting them into a relationship, without attentiveness to the implications of the specific pretext in play.

And there's something worth probing at with these kinds of authors' notes in the sense that... there's a lot of concern in fandom nowadays about "romanticizing" rape and abuse, and the seeming necessity of portraying perfect negotiation and consent in fanfic. And yet these sorts of paratextual framings seem to me to be dangerously mistaken about what consent even is - to be conceiving of it as a magic script with no interpersonal or situational antecedents, one that intrinsically smooths over systemic power differentials or lack of personal trust.

I wonder also if that's actually related to the simplistic approach to textual criticism that I sometimes call "checklist criticism" - the idea that a text can be deemed harmful or not, problematic or not, -ist or not, simply by going through a list of "is x present? check yes or no" bullet points, rather than taking a more holistic approach to the relationship between textual production and broader systems of power, being attentive to the specific premises and genre/stylistic aims of a text, etc. Possibly that's too much of a reach for what is ultimately a complaint about the difficulty of finding really juicy darkfic, but it's worth considering.

[f1cflcfic]

The Prophecy (SMAU ft. Lando Norris) Part VI

pairing: lando norris x singer!reader (fem!y/n)

summary: what happens after the break-up that noone saw coming? as Y/N L/N gears up to release her next album, each song reveals a little bit of the past, present and future of her relationship with Lando Norris. Inspired by a curated playlist built around "The Prophecy".

note: this is RPF and is obviously in no way, shape, or form reflective of real persons. also, this chapter contains some (implicit) references to sex.

genre: social media au (with written parts), angst, exes to lovers, happy ending

[A/N: and with this chapter, we come to an end of the Prophecy series! I've got some deleted scenes/bonus content, but other than that... time to say goodbye. I hope you've loved this journey as much as I have, do let me know!]

part i part ii part iii part iv part v

♥･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♡･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♥

December 8th, 2026

Second week of December, 2026

[Excerpt from Chicken Shop Date with Y/N L/N & Amelia]

“Are you a romantic?”

“I do – but I’m quite cautious, too. It takes me a while to open myself up to someone else.”

“What’s the most romantic thing someone’s ever done for you?”

Y/N thinks hard, then points at the food in front of them. “I think consistency, actually. Like, I had someone surprise me with my favorite meal every single time after major milestones. I thought it was really nice, especially because when you're tired you just want to spend time together, instead of having to work on putting dinner together for yourselves.”

“Really? You'd rather take-out over a homecooked meal?"

"Knowing your strengths is important in a partner. If you're not the best cook, take-out is the next best thing! And like I said, it's also about time."

"So what you’re saying is going on chicken shop dates is the epitome of romance to you?”

“Exactly,” Y/N says emphatically, pointing a fry at Amelia.

(...)

“Your album is called The Prophecy. Are you very superstitious?”

“Not really, no. But desperate times call for desperate plans. I think things like manifesting can't hurt,” Y/N giggles.

Amelia frowns. “Are you desperate, or are you calling me desperate?”

“Maybe not desperate. Let's go with yearning.”

(...)

“What do you think, is Christmas a good holiday to bring a date to?”

“Hmm , set the scene for me. Is it a friends only party, or family dinner?”

“It’s a dinner party with friends. Would, and should my date be willing to come?”

“Amelia, are you asking me on a second date?”

“Well, no. Maybe? Aren’t you...?”

Y/N blushes. “Let’s be present in the moment!”

“Okay, so tell me – can it be a good second date?”

“I think if you feel super comfortable with them, and you have great friends, the vibe isn’t super formal, then why not? It could be a great trial by fire. Like a new and improved orange peel test.”

“Has someone ever peeled an orange for you?”

“Yes,” Y/N nods. “That’s funny – there is an orange on our table right now.” Camera pans to a Terry’s chocolate orange.

“I’ll peel this one for you,” Y/N offers.

Third week of December, 2026

Last week of December, 2026

January, 2027

[Excerpt from Vogue]

It’s hard to think of the popstar as anything but unflappable, but she assures me there are plenty of moments in which she doubts herself. “I think anyone who craves that recognition at being good at what you do, is going to struggle with the reality of having people see you all the time. As a perfectionist, I wish I could control everything so people’d only ever see my best self all the time. But that’s a pipedream. There’s so many expectations, it can be difficult to figure out which ones were really your own to begin with – and which ones you’ve started to believe because you don’t want to disappoint anyone.”

Indeed, as a female popstar, L/N has had to deal with her fair share of hate online, oftentimes masked as mild concern or constructive criticism from supposed fans. For example, a leaked song earlier this year spurred fans on to comment and speculate about L/N’s ambition – Did she have enough of it? Was she going to give it all up for a man?

L/N’s the first to admit that it’s not entirely unsurprising, given that the song in question includes a lyric describing her willingness to carry the burdens of someone else by herself. “It’s never fun when stuff you chose not to release ends up finding its way to the public after all. There’s a reason I didn’t want it on the album,” she explains. “But in this case, I wrote the song with my friend Louis [Tomlinson] ages ago. We used it as a reference when I started writing in earnest again earlier this year, but that’s all it was meant to be. A reference.”

So why did it become such an obsession to her fans? Well, if one adds a high-profile relationship on top of a high-profile career, that’s a recipe for things to get complicated. The singer’s latest album details her experience with the subsequent public fall-out. While she previously hasn’t spoken much of her relationship with F1 driver Lando Norris and how it influenced her art, she is candid about it now. “I think for the first time, rather than wanting to use songs to capture the great moments, I used songwriting to help me reflect on what could’ve been, what it wasn't, where it went wrong. And in doing so, that also opened the door for me to grow.”

“It’s really painful to have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes love isn’t enough. Especially when in retrospect, there’s much more room for acknowledging how you contributed to the problem. So yeah, by challenging myself to be vulnerable in my art, I also had to put my own hurt and heart out there again. But I think it’s made me a stronger, better person.”

And what of that relationship now? She has a coy smile on her face.  “Good, I think, really good. I firmly believe my life is a lot richer when he's in it. So I count myself lucky that I get to have his back and he has mine.”

We are just about wrapping up the interview when her phone lights up with a message from L. It’s a link to an IG reel of dogs being bundled up like tiny burritos. It’s so innocuous, you’d almost forget that the person sending it is a star in his own right.

Celebrities, they’re just like us sometimes.

February, 2027

[Excerpt E! Online Grammy's Red Carpet interview]

"And we're here with the lovely Y/N L/N! Not nominated this year, but a presenter and performer on this night all about music."

"Hiii, thanks for having me!"

"Now tell us, you've had a super exciting year in 2026 - what are you most looking forward to tonight?"

"I'm doing a duet with Miley, which is awesome. I feel so honored they asked me to do this, and I love her so much. She's really one of the iconic voices of this generation, so to stand next to her on that stage? Amazing."

"That's super exciting! The two of you are also both heading on tour, Miley over the summer, you are literally heading out next week. How are you feeling about that?"

"Really good! I'm so excited to see the fans, I've done some shows here and there, but touring life is on another level."

"What else are you looking forward to? Some of your other friends are here tonight, as well, correct?"

Y/N nods. "Yeah, I actually just saw Louis [Tomlinson] arrive - he's nominated tonight so I'll be rooting for him. The Grammy's is always a great moment to catch up with friends as well, so maybe I'm even more excited for the after parties."

"Drink of choice tonight?"

"Probably champagne? Quite like the taste of it, always," Y/N winks at the camera.

March, 2027

April, 2027

FIN.

♥･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♡･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♥

You can read the previous parts by going here. Keep an eye out for the bonus content/deleted scenes!

The epilogue is now available here.

♥ likes, comments, reblogs are always very much appreciated ♥

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[aingeal98]

Stephcass in an actual romantic relationship has the potential to be both fun and angsty because like. Cass picks up physical techniques lightning quick. You do the move in front of her and boom she's learnt your whole fighting style. And when it comes to the physical side of romance that means she'd also pick things up incredibly quick, Steph does one move and Cass does in back and instantly memorises Steph's reaction. Like she would be the best girlfriend ever in terms of making you feel loved through physical touch. Also Cassandra Wayne most competitive and stubborn fucker in the batfamily once she and Steph are officially girlfriends there's no way she doesn't take it as a challenge to be the best girlfriend ever. And she succeeds! Everyone who sees them is like damn, Steph got lucky. Roses and chocolates to her house every week just because? Girl who is the expert at the human body making out with you constantly? She won the jackpot.

The angst aspect comes from that last part. The implicit balance between stephcass is that Cass is always going to have Steph beat when it comes to vigilanting but Steph is the expert when it comes to civilian life. Only now they're dating and Cass is pulling out all the stops and nailing it and Steph is enjoying it obviously but that kernel of insecurity is growing because what can she offer in comparison? Cass is the whole package and Steph has a half eaten packet of gum in her pocket and the experience of having mediocre sex with a creep. And obviously Cass would pick up on this insecurity and double her efforts because she's clearly doing something wrong so she simply needs to be Better at this girlfriend stuff. Which of course just adds to Steph feeling inadequate in comparison but it mostly being a subconscious thing because for the most part Cass is excellent at this point at making Steph feel loved and valued.

But that subconscious insecurity grows more prominent and you end up with a negative feedback loop that just grows and grows. I have faith they'd resolve it in the end and have a nice happy relationship but the middle part where they're both struggling would be so interesting to read.

[danses-with-dogmeat]

Fallout Characters' Lover's Embrace Quotes -- Extras

(Original ask): Hello 😊 I absolutely adore everything you do for the characters you write for! You get the interactions and such perfect every time I read something new 💕 I have a personal headcanon, not full blown request if you don't want it to be, question for you. If you could romance the companions in New Vegas like in 4, what would some of their lovers embrace quotes be? I love how you think and can't wait to hear what ideas you have for any of the characters ❤ have a good day

So I didn't actually get any requests for these specific characters that I can remember, but I had this in my WIPs folder, and had a good time looking back on them, so here they are!

As always, if you would like me to add any characters to this, please let me know, and I'll be happy to 😊

Also, here's a link to my first Lover's Embrace Quotes post with the FO3 and FNV Companions.

Just a heads up, too, a bit of nsfw below the cut (nothing explicit, but definitely some implicit stuffs).

Fallout 4:

Codsworth: 

“Prepared to face the day, sir/madam?”

“Oh my, now that was exciting!” 

“Your hair, sir/miss. Allow me to fix it for you?” 

“Good morning, sir/madam!” 

“My, you are truly amazing, my sweet.” 

Deacon:

“Whoa, when did you get here?” 

“Up for one more round? No?... Yes?”

“Just another minute. Then we can kick some ass or whatever.”

“Gooood morning! And it is a beautiful day out in the Commonwealth, the weather is looking mighty fine in this– Oh, you’re up? Okay, just making sure.” 

“Up and at ‘em, right boss?” 

“Wow. That was fun.” 

Maxson:

“Sleep well?” 

“I’ll take that over morning drills any day. No, I don’t need you to tell Kells that.” 

“Head’s still swimming…” 

“Don’t make me get up, not yet.” 

“Damn… Incredible.” 

Nick:

“Can’t take my eyes off you….” 

“Ain’t I the luckiest synth there is?” 

“Say… where’d my cuffs get off to, doll? May need ‘em for later.” 

"Well, that's one way to get the coolant pumping." (I know this is already a line of his, but I mean come on. It's too good not to use)

“What do you say, about ready to go?” 

“That sure was somethin’, sweetheart.”

Sturges:

“Mornin’ gorgeous/handsome.” 

“Ain’t nothin’ better than wakin’ up like that.” 

“You really are incredible, you know that?” 

“What a perfect way to start my day… wakin’ up next to you.”

“*whistles* That was somethin,’ baby.”

X6-88:

“Good morning, ma’am/sir.” 

“Awake quite yet?” 

“Damn.” 

“Sleep well, ma’am/sir?”

“I… Didn’t know I could feel like that…” 

Fallout 3:

Mr. Burke: 

“I suppose there are worse ways to wake up.” 

“Care for some coffee?” 

“Just a moment more, sweet one.” 

“Ahh, you vixen/scoundrel.”

“Just turn over. It can’t be time yet.” 

Harkness: 

“Starting our day off right, I see.”

“It can’t really be time to get up, can it?” 

“Mm, good morning…”

“What’re you… Oh? Well, a few more minutes, then.” 

“Babe, have you seen my handcuffs?”

Sarah Lyons: 

“Up and at ‘em. Come on.” 

“Oh, good, you’re finally up.” 

“The others better not have heard us.” 

“Quit your groaning, it’s not that early.” 

“Best to have a shower after all that.” 

Fallout New Vegas:

Benny: 

“Ring-a-ding, baby. Time to rise.” 

“Easy there, squeeze. Save some for tonight.” 

“Can’t be time yet. Stay here awhile, lemme hold ya.” 

“Geeze baby, you wear me out.” 

“24-karate, pussy cat. Just platinum...” 

Colonel Hsu:  

"Right, then... Up we get."

“Well… that was an excellent performance. Top marks from me, private.”

“Rise and shine, love.” 

“Now that was worth waking for at this hour.” 

“Wish we had a few more moments…”

Joshua Graham:

“Just… divine.” 

“Care to pray with me this morning?” 

“Wake up, dear one.” 

“Praise be to Him who lights the sky…” 

“Ahh… still, your love heals me.” 

Ulysses: 

"Be slow, beloved. We can take our time."

“Another sunrise…”

“Time to wake.” 

“So… It wasn’t a dream. Hm.” 

*huffing* “Need another rest after that.” 

Victor: 

“Shoo, didn’t know you had that in ya.” 

“Where to today, pardner?”

“You look like I dug ya outta that grave again, hehe. Only teasin’.”

“Well, how-dy.” 

“Mornin,’ pardner. How’d you sleep?” 

Vulpes:

“Awake at last? Good.” 

“Mm. Expect the same from me tonight, courier.” 

“Ave, amica mea.” 

“Ah, to hear my name sound from your lips… A fine sound this morning.” 

“Expergiscimini. The sun has risen.” 

Yes Man: 

“Wow, Six, that was the best way to start the day!”

“I sure am glad to have you by my side.” 

“Rise and shine!” 

“What a great morning it is!”

“Boy, that sure was fun! Ready to make a difference today?” 

[phantomrose96]

Actually I'm so incredibly lucky to have The Silt Verses because it gives me the kind of character dynamics I desperately love and so very rarely find.

I am an ABSOLUTE sucker for characters who go "I will move heaven and earth for you. I will be driven to both great and terrible decisions for your sake because of how I am defined by you" but I do... NOT... care about romance. I Don't Care About Romance. I don't want it. I don't relate. My immersion hits a cliff there. I'm an aromantic Character Enjoyer and I do not care about shipping at all.

So as you can imagine, it's a challenge to find "I will do everything for you" character dynamics which, if not canonically romantic, end up being ships that get treated like canon if you try to talk about the characters in fandom spaces.

I am incredibly drawn to sibling media and I think it's largely because that's the primary way I've found these dynamics and they don't get treated as "come on it's basically a canon romance" by the main chunk of the fandom. I'm an FMA enjoyer, a Gravity Falls enjoyer, an Over The Garden Wall enjoyer--fuck I'm a Supernatural enjoyer, for this reason. Do you know what that's like? When Supernatural gets you because you're so hungry?

And then... The Silt Verses... Filled, FILLED, with these "I will move heaven and earth for you" kinds of dynamics--healthy, unhealthy, as sources of hope and sources of absolute destruction. Of course I'm here for it. Of course I'm clocked in.

But it SHOULD be hopeless for me. I mean the only actual sibling dynamics are just within backstories--Carpenter and her brother Em. Faulkner and his brother Charlie. Hayward has no siblings. Paige's aren't relevant. Faulkner and Carpenter have exactly this intense dynamic I love--same with Paige and Hayward--and then Hayward and Carpenter--and I should be taking the L because this always ends in ships.

But Jon Ware and Muna Hussen--who I owe my life to--very intentionally did not do that. Carpenter is aromantic. She gets to be that canonically. There's never a hint of romantic tension between her and Faulkner. When they call each other brother and sister, it's religious formality first, and then it's an actual found-sibling kind of bond.

Hayward and Paige, in like any other media, would have been a couple. The way they save each other, and lean on each other, and leave their old selves behind to become someone new together. It's obvious. I've seen it a million times. But when Jon Ware got asked in a Q&A about what Paige and Hayward -are- to each other ... look I just need to go with direct quotes to do the answer justice

I think maybe there’s also an implicit question there about whether there’s something romantic going on – maybe I’m reading into it, but that is something that’s on my mind a lot, so I’d love to talk about it more. ... I personally, I don’t like writing fictional characters where the most important moment in their narrative arcs is when they get together with the person they were always meant to get together with. ... And again, I think [give the people what they want] can send you in the wrong direction, one that ends up being essentially flattening – we don’t think, "if these characters hook up, OK, what new opportunities does that give us to explore them, to understand them in greater depth?" ... And after we released maybe one episode of The Silt Verses, I saw a couple of folks online going ‘oh, god, I hope this isn’t going to end with Carpenter and Faulkner hooking up,’. And you go, "oh my god, I hadn’t considered that as a possibility for a second, that’s not who they are and that’s not what the relationship is here" - but of course all of us are primed for it, that enemies-to-lovers thread that is so common. ... Because it was freeing because after Season 1, nobody is expecting or hoping that Hayward gets together with anybody. No-one wants that particularly!

And Shrue and Val come along... each of whom has intense interactions and kinds of relationships with the people they encounter but, still, no romance. And nothing among the high katabasians or the adjudicators. If there WAS any kind of romantic read with Rane toward Faulkner, it does nothing to overshadow what was happening there. I liked someone's likening it to Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. The Thing going on between them can't really be reduced to shipping.

We DO even get the family-related bonds and trauma I usually lean on. Paige with her dad. Faulkner with his dad. Carpenter dealing with the trauma of her Nana and brother. Shrue left in harrowing limbo about the safety of their (maybe non-existent) children and husband.

Anyway I didn't even mean this to be so long. I'm just so blessed and lucky to have character dynamics where they're screaming and sobbing each other's names and no one is pulling the "There's no platonic explanation for this" card. I'm so glad.

[slylycurioustreasure]

The Obsidian-Eyed Guardian

— Part 2.2

Summary: Heir to a cursed line of sorcerers, you carry on your shoulders the weight of an ancestral pact: to prevent the destruction of the world, you must unite with four men from clans once enemies of your own kind—a demon, a celestial, an immortal fox, and a human.

But nothing is simple when love, hate, desire, and betrayal intertwine. Torn between your curse and your feelings, protected by some, judged by others, you will have to face the truth about your blood... and what you are willing to sacrifice to survive.

What if it wasn't you, but them... who were trapped from the start?

Genre: Fantasy, Dark Romance, Drama, Action, Reverse Harem, Supernatural, Wuxia, Historical

Pairing : Park Sunghoon x reader

Word : 19k

⚠️ Warning: Blood, betrayal, jealousy, heartbreaking separations, desperate and all-consuming love, loneliness, magic, pain, deep introspection, ambiguous morality, binding and painful bonds, toxic loyalty, feelings of rejection, psychological violence.

Sexual content: vulgar and crude language, vaginal and oral sex, magic related to the sexual act, explicit and provocative dialogue, voluntary submission, intense rhythms alternating between violence and tenderness, body marks left by bites and scratches, sex in a forbidden place, blasphemy, domination, implicit BDSM practices, crude language and consensual sexual violence.

PREV PART— NEXT (PART 3) ✘ SERIES MASTERLIST ✘

Yànluò Kèzhàn Inn (焰落客栈) — The Inn of Falling Flames

The door had barely closed behind you when Sunghoon grabbed you—not roughly, but with that stifled anger you recognize in men who have struggled with themselves for too long. His arm circled your waist, the other slid across the back of your neck, and your back hit the icy wall softly, like a silent cleaver. Not a word. Just the shudder of his breath against your cheek, burning like white-hot metal, as he fought not to give in too quickly.

Sunghoon looks at you as if he's about to devour you. And maybe that's exactly what he's about to do.

His eyes, unfathomably black, stare into yours with the intensity of lost men. It's no longer desire. It's a fever. A damnation. A silent oath that only your body can exorcise. The silence around you is almost sacred, taut like a rope about to snap. Your breaths are short, out of tune, desperately hungry.

Outside, the first fireworks burst. Blood red. They illuminate your faces with a supernatural glow, bathe the room in a crimson glow, and make shadows dance on the walls like spirits summoned by your sins. The paper lanterns quiver and tremble, as if they were watching, complicit, a forbidden ceremony.

Sunghoon approaches. Slowly. Too slowly. His hand slides against your cheek, trembling, almost hesitant—but it's not gentleness, it's the storm before the rush. And when his lips reach the tip of your nose, he kisses you so gently it makes you gasp.

A farewell. Or a prelude to oblivion.

He moves down, his mouth brushing your cheek, your ear, your neck. Sunghoon doesn't kiss. He writes. He traces on your skin the silent verses of a desire so ancient it becomes sacred. Each kiss is a confession he can't express. Each touch is a war he's losing.

Then, Sunghoon reaches the corner of your mouth. He doesn't kiss yet. He lets your lips brush, search for each other, miss each other. You feel his breath brush yours, rough, feverish. The space between your lips is reduced to a thread, and yet he strives not to break it. He wants you to beg him. He wants your silence to implore his. And when you finally move forward to capture his mouth, he flees—his tongue brushes your cheek, trails down your neck, and you moan in frustration.

His mouth reaches the hollow of your throat. He stays there. For a long time. Too long. His lips close over your skin with agonizing slowness. He licks, he sucks, he tastes. He marks. And when he reaches the beat of your heart, he stops. His lips rest there like a blade on a still-raw wound.

“I want to drink until your last light…”

Your throat tightens. You don't know if you're gasping or sobbing. Your fingers stray into his hair, desperate, clutching at it like a prayer. Your legs buckle. Your breath hitches. And he continues. His voice, hoarse, seeps into you like poison:

“You will be my fate…”

Then Sunghoon attacks your hanfu. He doesn't undo the knots: he rips them out. The silk tears beneath his fingers, a sound both delicate and violent, and each layer falls away like a lie being exposed. Your skin is revealed, shivers in the icy air, tenses under his gaze. He steps back, contemplates you. As one contemplates a sacred object. As one gazes upon a curse.

“You are a work of art… And works of art are locked up. They are stolen. They are broken… Do you want to be one, my little judge?”

Sunghoon lifts you up, as if he's been carrying your weight for a thousand lifetimes. Your legs wrap around him, your forehead presses against his throat. You tremble. He lays you down with a heartbreaking gentleness, as if he fears losing you in the very act of possessing you. His fingers slide into your hair, remove your pin. Your hair collapses, like a sudden night. And outside, a firework explodes, flooding the room with a bloody red.

He freezes. His gaze is feverish, haunted.

"If you don't answer... You will be punished. Mistakes always have a sentence."

You smile. Slowly. You are a priestess offered to her executioner. You stretch out your throat. You expose your belly. You open your heart.

“Yes… Lock me up. Punish me. Devour me… As long as in the end, it’s you. Only you.”

You tug at his hanfu. Sunghoon gives in. He lets you do it. Your hand explores, bares, brushes against him. Beneath your fingers, his skin is burning. His muscles are hard, carved by war and rage. He is made of flames and ice. Of punishments and prayers. Of you.

It lies upon you like a sentence, a fall, a war that can no longer be stopped.

His body is warm, burning, as if emerging from a blaze. And when his hands rest on you, Sunghoon doesn't touch you: he examines you. He explores your skin like a mad calligrapher copying the verses of a forbidden sutra, his fingers trembling with rage, desire, hunger. He deciphers you. He reads you in a low voice, in a forgotten language, pagan and sacred. Every hollow becomes a sanctuary. Every fold, a trap. Every flaw, an offering.

His palm brushes your throat, and you feel the edge of the saber—not the caress. You feel like he could squeeze. Like he could open you, there, with a slow gesture. He moves down slowly, so slowly, toward your sternum, then traces the valley of your breasts as if following the scars of a past too heavy to bear. His breath becomes hoarse. His irises darken, the color of a storm, the color of a moonless night.

Sunghoon whispers, in a hollow, strangled voice:

“You are mine. Mine. Not the world’s. Not theirs. Not even yours.”

His words lacerate. They enter you like an ancient poison, a cursed pact you've already signed—with your blood, your soul, your will.

And Sunghoon's fingers slide along your skin like white-hot jade blades, first grazing, then tracing cruel lines across the contours of your breast. When they reach your nipple, he doesn't brush against it—he grasps it. Between two knuckles as precise as metal pliers, he pinches it with a methodical, almost searching slowness, as if searching for the exact point where pleasure turns to torture.

You inhale too deeply, too sharply. A cry escapes your throat, hoarse, wild, raw, as if a part of your soul had just been ripped from you. Your back arches violently against the dark silk mattress, taut as a bowstring about to snap, and your neck tilts, offering your bare throat like a sacrifice.

Sunghoon says nothing.

He doesn't need to speak.

For his mouth acts. It descends. Slowly. Terribly slowly. His lips are sweet poison and his breath is a bite of hot ashes on your trembling skin. When he encloses your other breast in the burning hollow of his mouth, it is no longer a kiss—it is a combustion. A sacrificial offering.

You're burning.

You're burning from the inside out. You feel the heat, that rising tide, swallowing your belly, consuming your loins, ravaging the secret sanctuary between your thighs. It's not just a shudder—it's a fracture. As if something is breaking deep inside you, a forgotten dam, an ancient seal, something dark and powerful that even your own power couldn't name.

And you scream. Again. But this time, it's a scream that has nothing human about it. It's not a complaint. It's a perverted prayer, a call from the depths of your body to this celestial being who crushes you, explores you, consumes you. It's the echo of a chasm he has awakened within you, a chasm that had never known light—only shadows. Primitive, violent impulses that had always slept beneath the calm surface of your mask.

Sunghoon's teeth graze your still-wet nipple, trapping it for a moment, then pull with cruel delicacy, a patience that borders on refined torture. You moan again, but this time, it's no longer pain. It's no longer fear.

It's abandonment.

You are his. You feel it. Not in a romantic sense. Not in a naive pact. You are his like a terrain conquered by war. Like a city set ablaze. Like a body caught in a forbidden ritual. He desecrates and sanctifies you in the same breath.

His gaze rises back up to you—black, unfathomable, merciless. And in his eyes, you see your own reflection: a broken, possessed being, magnificent in his ruin. Sunghoon releases your breast slowly, as if reluctantly returning your flesh, and his hand moves down to your stomach, his palm burning, possessive, marking your skin with an invisible but indelible imprint.

And your whole body, on fire, waits for what happens next. Not to flee. But to be annihilated.

And then… It happens.

Your link.

The mark tattooed on your shoulder blade glows, like an ember blown out after centuries of oblivion. Blood red. Sob red. Condemnation red. It throbs like a beast's heart. His, etched vividly on his wrist, pulses in echo, a furious, brutal, uncontrollable beat. Their glow seeks each other, seizes each other, devours each other. Your bodies attract like two magnets that hate each other, two chained gods who can only crush each other with each revolution.

Sunghoon descends, kneeling before you like a fallen king before the idol he is about to desecrate.

But there is nothing tender in his submission. Nothing sweet. This isn't a kiss he steals from you. It's a silent war, a sacrilege whispered between his cursed lips. You feel his breath brush the inside of your thighs—a damp, disordered, irrational heat. Like the wind from ancient tombs. Like the sigh of a celestial freed by breaking a forgotten seal.

Sunghoon no longer looks at you with human eyes. He devours you with the fever of a black priest. With the madness of an ascetic who has finally found the beating heart of his heresy.

His palms slide slowly over your hips, then part them, gently but firmly, like two blades opening onto a living heart. He cuts you open. Literally. He tears you away from yourself. Every millimeter of your skin he reveals becomes a dirge, an offering to chaos. You are no longer a woman. You are an invocation. You are the burning hearth of an unholy ritual.

And he—Sunghoon—is not a lover. He is the instrument of the pact.

When his mouth reaches your center, it's not a shudder that runs through your body, but a telluric jolt, a tremor of the soul. His tongue enters you with the grave slowness of a forbidden spell, with the unholy precision of a monk tattooing forbidden runes on flesh. This is not pleasure. This is not sweetness.

It's a power grab.

It is enslavement.

It's an incantation.

The first pressure tears a hoarse, inhuman cry from you, and you feel your muscles tense, your stomach hollow, your back arch as if your body were trying to flee—or hold it in. But Sunghoon is relentless. He drinks from your source like a cursed cup. Every movement of his tongue seems calculated to break something inside you: modesty, will, resistance.

Sunghoon moans against you. A hoarse, hungry, almost animal sound. And in that vibration, you lose your bearings. You moan, gasp, lose all sense of time. You convulse beneath his mouth like a woman possessed. You are nothing more than a black torch consumed by his breath. More than a sacrilegious fire.

Sunghoon adores you like one adores a demon:

With fanaticism.

With despair.

With violence.

His hands grip your thighs, pushing them further apart, not asking—not begging—but demanding. He opens you like an offering on the altar of a fallen god. You feel your magic escaping you with every strangled moan. You feel your essence abandon you and flow into him like a poison only he knows how to tame.

You are no longer a woman in his arms. You are an oracle in a trance. A living artifact.

You collapse, finally, under his tongue. You break. You scream. You cry. You plead. But he continues, tireless, until he makes you convulse again, until your cries break into hoarse sobs and your sighs become silent prayers.

And then… Sunghoon climbs back up. Gently. Slowly. Too slowly. Every inch of his ascent is torture. His mouth traces a trail of black fire across your wet skin, and you feel him marking you, imprinting something inside you, something eternal, unspeakable. Your fingers close around his shoulders as if you're afraid of falling—when you're already falling, inside.

When he finally reaches your face, Sunghoon is breathless, but his eyes… His eyes are no longer human. They shine with a mad glare. A feverish, almost painful glare. His pupils are dilated, as if he's tasted some divine drug. He's trembling. He's on the edge. You feel it—he's reeling, like a warrior drunk on slaughter, like a blade vibrating just before it cuts. All it takes is a word. A sigh. A breath.

And Sunghoon would dive.

He kisses you then, brutally. Tongue against tongue, taste against taste, you against him. And you understand, in this devouring kiss, that it's not over. That this was only the first door of the temple.

And as he is about to cross the second, he says:

“Tell me you love me… or I’ll lose myself.”

You grab him. Like holding a condemned man. You scream, sob, hiccup.

"I love you. I hate you. I want you."

And then suddenly... Sunghoon enters. Not gently. Not hesitantly. But all at once, all at once, like a sentence spoken in a low voice under a rain of ashes. He enters you brutally , without a word, without a warning, like a drawn saber, a deadly strike in the shadows.

The pain is raw. Total. A sharp fire, pure and raw, ripping you open. You scream—but it's not your voice. It's not that of the woman you were. It's the beast inside you. The witch. The creature the war left behind. A heartbreaking, inhuman scream, as if your very soul is split open, caught in magic older than you.

He growls against your skin, his teeth clenched, every muscle tense like a bow. He pushes deeper, slowly now, merciless, as if he wants to inhabit you . As if he wants to destroy you from the inside out. And you feel… Everything. Every inch of him. Every pulse of his desire, raging, blind, desperate.

Sunghoon doesn't make love. He takes revenge. He takes you like you cast an irreversible spell. Like you destroy what you can't have.

Your legs close around him—reflexively, out of need, or out of defiance. Your back arches. Your nails dig into his skin. You want to run away. You want to stay. You want to die and be reborn, all at once.

And Sunghoon... He accelerates. His movements become wild, rhythmic, inhuman. His thrusts are furious, uncontrolled waves, strikes of passion pent up for too many years, too many silences.

He grabs your hips, lifts you, pushes you against the silk sheets. Your back hits the headboard. Your forehead falls on his shoulder. You gasp. He turns you over, abruptly. Your stomach on the bed. He takes you again, without slowing down, harder. Deeper. And you lose yourself.

You lose track of up, down, time. The world becomes his breath against your neck. His hands around your throat. His name you moan like an oracle, like a poison you want to swallow to the end.

Sunghoon moaned back—hoarse, almost painful—as if taking you was ripping him apart too. As if your warmth were exorcising him.

And he whispers, panting, his breath breaking:

“You… You’re killing me…”

But Sunghoon doesn't stop. He pushes deeper, all the way to the bone. He rips moans, tears, and sobs out of your control. Your body vibrates, your legs tremble, your hands try to find a place to anchor themselves—in his hair, on his chest, in his blood.

You scratch him. You hurt him. He bites your shoulder, brutally, leaving a red, raw, hot mark.

And outside, the sky bursts.

The lanterns burn out. Fireworks tear silently through the night. But none of their bursts are as incandescent as what you are becoming . A demon and a witch. A judge and a criminal. Two hearts that have never learned to love except with violence.

Sunghoon slows down. His thrusts become slower. Deeper. Each thrust is an unspoken oath. An "I love you" choked in his throat. A goodbye whispered between moans.

His hand slides between your legs. He wants you to fall with him. To be lost, burned, erased. And you do. You come against him. Once. Twice. You lose count. Your body arches, shaken, seized by convulsions you can't hold back. He follows you. With a final cry. A low, hoarse, animal rattle.

Sunghoon empties himself into you. And for a few seconds, he stops breathing.

When he falls back on you, panting, trembling, it's as if he's collapsing against his own past. He stays there, anchored inside you, his breath hot on your neck, his skin covered in sweat, your blood, the shadow of a love he no longer knows how to refuse.

“I hate you,” he whispers in a dead voice. And then, in a whisper, “But I love you even more. And I’m… Lost.”

You don't answer. You cry. Silently. Your tears fall onto the bed, onto him, onto this night that engulfs you both.

Sunghoon kisses the back of your neck. Not tenderly. Desperately. As if he wants to keep you in his mouth forever. As if he'll spit you out tomorrow.

And he whispers, in a voice so low that only your heart hears it:

“You are mine. Forever. Even if I have to burn to keep you.”

Sunghoon never left you.

Or rather, he never really let go of you.

His shadow was everywhere around you, a silent weight, an icy breath on the back of your neck, a presence that insinuated itself into every corner of your body and mind. You no longer knew where your breath ended and his began.

Sunghoon was there, always there, like a dull ache in the hollow of your skin. Not a moment of respite, not a moment of freedom. His presence was an invisible chain, a bond of blood and curse that you shared. A mark that burned beneath your clothes, there, on your skin, pulsing like a cursed heart, beating in unison yet light years apart.

You sat on his lap, back straight, hands immersed in the cold inkstone, slowly grinding the black ink stick. The acrid smell of soot and pigment crept into your nostrils, bitter, lingering, like poison. The white paper before you was sacred territory, a battlefield where his brushes traced signs and destinies, while your hand slowly turned the black powder into a dark, hypnotic liquid.

His free hand, the one not holding the brush, slid over your stomach, slow and heavy, each caress like a threat, a promise, a half-whispered oath. His fingers traced burning circles, awakening buried pains and forbidden desires. You shivered, despite yourself, as he let his hot breath fan against your bare skin, his nose brushing against the nape of your neck, his lips a breath away from your ear.

"At this rate, my legs will end up numb before all this ink is even ready..." His voice, hoarse, broken by emotion held back for too long, betrayed bitter amusement and deep weariness.

You shrugged, a sad smile on your lips, staring at the black ink you were melting.

"If you didn't spend all your time distracting me... Maybe I'd be a better student." Your laughter was a breath, a fragile glimmer of humanity in this dark universe.

Sunghoon gently nuzzled your skin, and a shiver ran through you. His touch was both a caress and a torture, a tender bite that consumed your defenses.

"You're the one who distracts me from my duties," he murmured, his voice heavy with silent reproaches and unleashed desires.

His fingers slid slowly lower, brushing against the small of your back, teetering between restraint and surrender, making your heart race.

You wanted to get away, to escape this grip that was both suffocating and consuming you. Slowly, you slid off his lap, seeking refuge on the cold, hard floor, your back straight, the inkstone in front of you.

“I’ll continue here,” you breathed, your voice fragile, almost breaking. “So as not to be a distraction.”

You pretended to pout, puffing out your cheeks slightly, a desperate play to keep a distance you didn't know how to maintain.

But he didn't let you go.

With a sure, relentless gesture, Sunghoon pulled you towards him, placing you back on his lap, your chest crushed against his. His warmth enveloped you, a black flame that devoured what remained of your resistance.

He buried his face in your neck, like a shipwrecked man clinging to the last lifeline, whispering your name like a desperate prayer:

“Don't go away from me… Y/n.” His voice was broken, shaky, filled with a deep pain that reached your core.

You couldn't help the lump rising in your throat, that harsh, icy weight that stifled all hope. So you slowly stroked his hair, your fingers sliding gently along the back of his neck, trying to soothe the storm rumbling within him, to calm the black fire consuming him from within. The warmth of his skin beneath your palm, the slowness of his breath against yours, all of it formed a fragile bubble, suspended outside of time, far from the cries of the world and its storms. You felt beneath your hand that paradoxical mixture of tension and need, of restrained power and barely veiled vulnerability.

In this almost sacred silence, your heart beat to the rhythm of the caresses you offered it, in the hope of bringing back a semblance of peace to this chaos that it was.

But then, brutally, heartbreakingly, the silence was shattered.

The door exploded.

A wild crash echoed like thunder in the dark night. The wood splintered, sending splinters into the air, and an icy blast rushed in, carrying with it the warmth and tenderness you shared. The atmosphere froze, heavy with a dull, implacable threat. The next moment, you felt his body tense against yours, a bow ready to release its deadly arrow.

Sunghoon leaped upright, his muscles tense, his gaze turning cold, warlike, almost animal. The gentleness that enveloped you was fading beneath the icy bite of imminent danger. He was no longer the man who sought refuge in your arms, but the soldier, the sharp shadow that cut through the night.

Before you, a figure flickered, trembling, like a flame about to go out.

Jang Wonyoung.

The mortal.

The woman for whom, once, his heart had burned with a tender and cruel fire, this flame that he had believed he could nourish, until fate came to crush his dreams under the weight of your shadow.

She lay there, collapsed, almost unreal, pale as death itself, panting, breathing with difficulty. Her once immaculate clothes were torn, soaked with a dark red that seemed to ooze from her invisible wounds. Her face bore the pallor of a ghost, her livid lips betraying an icy, unfathomable fear. She slowly opened her wild eyes, meeting Sunghoon's with a heartbreaking intensity: a storm of horror, relief, and a love shattered by time and silence.

Her body faltered, her legs gave way, and without strength, she collapsed, unconscious, on the cold floor.

Silence fell again, heavy, oppressive, like a sealed coffin. The air seemed saturated with pain, regret, unspoken words, and dead promises.

“Wonyoung…” Sunghoon breathed, his voice broken, trembling, a silent scream that tore through the icy night of his heart.

Without even meeting your gaze, without an ounce of hesitation, he abruptly pushed you away. You fell to your knees, breathless, your body bruised by the sudden rejection, abandoned like a broken toy, a shattered fragment tossed to the ground without remorse.

He rushed to her, lifted her up with a desperate, infinitely fragile, almost painful tenderness that you had never seen in him. His hands were trembling, betraying the depth of an emotion he always hid behind his impenetrable mask.

Then, in a burst of cold, harsh light, they both disappeared, leaving you alone. Alone with the immense emptiness their absence had left in your chest.

The ink stick slowly slipped from your clenched fingers, shattering into hard, black shards that lacerated your palm without you feeling the slightest pain. Your skin felt numb, your mind filled with an icy cold.

Your stomach tightened violently, as if an invisible force were strangling you from within. Your heart screamed silently, a dull, tortured cry that had no echo. No anger, no jealousy, none of it.

No.

You were beyond that.

You were the shadow, the curse incarnate. Cursed, condemned to bear the weight of an impossible love, sealed by a pact of shadows, blood, and suffering. You were a witch, a creature locked in an invisible cage, prisoner of a cruel destiny, of a dark and inescapable fate.

In this silence where the light was going out, where the world seemed to collapse around you, an icy certainty took hold: you would never be the one he saw. You would never be able to share a future. You would always be the open wound in his soul, the creeping shadow that gnawed at his light.

And maybe…

Not even in this life.

You stayed.

Even as every fiber of your being screamed to flee, to dissolve into darkness, to turn your back once and for all on this kingdom of ashes that your heart had become. To go far away, out of this night where your own silence echoed, to disappear into the folds of shadow where no one would call you, where the pain would perhaps dissipate into oblivion. As you had done so many times before, withdrawing from the battle of the world, fleeing the wounds that life kept planting in you. But this time, you had stayed. You had not shunned.

For what ?

Because love is an irremediable madness, a wound you carry like a brand, a poison from which you never truly heal. Because even when the fire consumed you to the bone, you still wanted to sink into its embers. Hoping, against all reason, that one day, perhaps, that very fire could be reborn, illuminate the ashes with a miracle. That something impossible would emerge from the nothingness to which it had relegated you.

You had chosen Sunghoon. Again and again. Despite the insurmountable distance that had grown between you, an icy, impenetrable wall, a chasm where your hands broke with every attempt. Despite the hard, cruel frost in his gaze, those steely eyes that had ceased to call to you except through the force of worn-out habit. Despite his silences, heavy with unsaid words sharper than a thousand blades, silences so deep they drowned every spark within you. Despite his absences, long, cold, deep, like so many chasms that swallowed every fragment of your life.

You had clung to what he had been. To the almost extinguished glow of an ancient tenderness, to the fragile silhouette of a past where Sunghoon had loved you. As if love could survive from these faded vestiges, these hollow echoes, these broken memories. As if that were enough to resurrect the light.

You had reached out. You had held out your heart, fragile, beating, offering, hoping for an answer—even if it was just a whisper, a breath, a flutter of an eyelid that would tell you there was still something left. But each time, your voice broke, shattered against the stone wall he had erected around himself. You had tried to pierce that fortress of ice, to touch the man beneath the cold shell, to brush against his frozen soul. But Sunghoon wouldn't give in. He wouldn't.

"I have more serious concerns." Those words struck your heart like a saber blow. Sharp, sharp, final. Sunghoon hadn't even looked at you. He had turned his face away from your despair. Those words were a sentence. A condemnation sealed with an iron seal, the final tombstone placed on your bond. A grave where you had thought hope would still blossom.

You had smiled. A broken, torn, desperate smile. You had believed those words because you wanted to believe. Because you clung, like a drowning woman to a piece of wood, to the idea that there remained a crack, a flaw through which the light could return. That he could remember you. That he could come back.

So you waited.

You had waited for him to come back, to look at you, to care, to love you. You had waited, mercilessly, in the invisible cage of your patience, that trap of suffering and mad hope, day after day, minute after minute, in the slow agony of an all-consuming wait.

Hands clasped, lips closed, heart offered like a sacrifice, beating dully, a funeral drum in your chest. You waited like a damned woman, condemned never to see salvation, prisoner of a love that would never be returned.

Every day, you felt your life crumble, unravel into a thousand threads of pain woven into your bones, in the hollow of your chest. A dull, insidious agony, all-consuming, silently gnawing at the soul, invisible to those who don't know how to look.

But nothing came.

Sunghoon did not return.

Sunghoon wasn't looking at you anymore.

You were nothing more than a ghost in his world, a shadow he could barely bear. A wound he carried, but one he longed to see disappear, like a weight too heavy. Your love, that burning blaze, was no longer enough. You were no longer the light that lit his days, but the fleeting shadow his eyes avoided.

And you could no longer deny that.

So your steps had led you, on that starless night, to the Hanging Garden of Perfumes. Xuánxiāng Yuán.

A place of cruel beauty, a beauty so pure it tore at the heart. A forest of silence suspended in the shadows of sky lanterns.

Bleached wooden walkways, like ancestral bones, stretched over the deep, black waters, shimmering like open wounds to infinity. Serpentine bridges connected the jade-roofed pavilions, all enveloped in a silver mist that stretched like a breath of death. Everywhere, dormant lotuses, frozen in icy stillness, shone with a spectral light beneath the pale halo of hanging lanterns.

The wind itself seemed to have frozen. Time suspended. Absolute stillness. Not a breath, not a sigh, nothing but that oppressive, perfect silence, which held you in its icy embrace. And the only sound that broke that silence was the dull, heavy beating of your own heart—a drum of pain, a condemned man's hammer.

You had moved forward, each step echoing like a death knell on the cold flagstones, each echo reverberating like a dire omen. You were alone. But the weight of your grief made you a thousand times heavier. A thousand pains, a thousand regrets, a thousand disappointments crushed your fragile body.

At the edge of a black pool, water as still as the starless night, you leaned over. You wanted to see something other than your reflection—a fragment of light, a forgotten smile, a sliver of hope to be gathered from the night. But the mirror returned only your pale face. A bent silhouette, eyes hollowed by sleepless nights, dark circles hollowed like ravines of shadow, lips cracked by the overflow of silences and unspoken words.

You were kneeling.

And the weight of grief had broken you.

A heart-rending sob erupted from your chest, an invisible blade piercing you without warning. You collapsed, your body trembling on the icy stones, your arms wrapped around your own being, as if to keep your heart from falling apart, as if to hold back the tide of pain that threatened to engulf you, to swallow up what little light you had left.

You had cried.

But not the kind of furtive, almost timid tears that slide silently over the edge of your eyelids in the secrecy of a fading night. No. What you were shedding wasn't just clear water. It was a raging torrent, a furious river of pain, bitter and burning, that dug into your skin, cutting into your flesh and soul deeper than the sharpest blade.

Each tear, heavy and inflamed, was an invisible dagger planted in the hollow of your being, a corrosive venom insinuating itself into the smallest folds of your pain, tearing away what remained of your strength, tearing at the fragile bonds that bound you to life.

Your whole body was shaking, vibrating with that dull, wild pain—as ferocious as a hunted, wounded tiger, ready to bite the earth with its bloody claws.

Muffled sobs, hoarse and primitive, escaped your tight throat, death rattles of agony and despair that seemed to come from a time before time, from the forgotten echo of a broken melody.

They were the lamentations of your martyred heart, woven from buried regrets, silent humiliations, from all those hours stolen from hope, spent staring at a silent, impassive sky, as cruel as a merciless judge.

"Why... Why am I always the one who loves the most?" Your voice, a broken breath, a whisper broken by pain, faded into the icy air.

You were teetering on the edge of the abyss, fragile and trembling, a child broken under the weight of a world too hard, too cold.

Around you, Xuánxiāng Yuán stretched, silent and motionless, a golden prison within an empty white palace. Its pale wooden galleries reflected the spectral glow of the suspended sky lanterns, frozen in a still, icy light, as if petrified in a frozen dream. The lotuses, heavy and motionless, drifted on black, lifeless water, prisoners of an eternal, merciless sleep. Like you. Frozen in a painful beauty. Captive of a winter that would never end.

You had no more strength.

More willpower.

So, with desperate rage, you hit the ground with all your might. Again. Again. Again. Your fists crashed against the icy stone, tearing your fragile skin, letting blood flow, hot and raw, splashing the immaculate whiteness of the cobblestones, a macabre painting, a silent cry of your suffering that no one would come to wipe away.

You wanted your pain to become visible, palpable, undeniable. You wanted to scream your misery to the whole world, to him, to this ghost who had left you wandering in the shadows.

But Sunghoon wasn't there.

And he wouldn't come.

First, you whispered his name, a cursed breath thrown into the eternal night. "Park Sunghoon..."

Then, pain consumed you. And you screamed. Wildly. Desperately. A heart-rending, primal scream, shattering the frozen silence of the garden, a scream that carried the anger of a thousand shattered heavens.

“You destroyed me! You took me, consumed me, then abandoned me!” Your voice trembled, choked with rage and pain, a howl of agony that tore through the starless night. “You made me a ruin… An abandoned carcass! And you don’t even realize it!”

But the deepest, most intolerable wound was the one that burned silently, invisible.

You couldn't even hate him.

“But the worst part… I can’t even hate you…” Those words, whispered with the desperate weariness of a broken soul, were sharper than all the swords in the world.

They betrayed the cruellest truth: you were captive to an impossible love, chained by invisible bonds, torn promises, by the same pain you were trying to escape.

You let yourself fall onto your back, exposed and vulnerable on the cold stone. Your body trembled, naked, abandoned under the merciless light of the hanging lanterns, their soft, cruel glow illuminating your pale face, helpless before the abyss that was devouring you from within.

Every breath was torture, a cruel reminder of his absence. Every beat of your bruised heart sounded the cadence of an abysmal emptiness, deeper than the darkest abyss.

You were nothing more than a living wound, a witch with a shattered heart, marked not by runes or pacts, but by a love torn from the flesh.

A dull poison.

A gaping wound that bled endlessly.

In that night of silver and ashes, you finally understood the bitter truth of the sorrow of loving a celestial. Of loving a divine being, too high, too distant, too perfect for this imperfect world. Of loving an inaccessible star. Of loving an elusive wind. An icy breath that eats away at you to the bone.

You loved the impossible.

And the stars, they never go down.

So you closed your eyes, engulfed in a sea of ​​shadows and regrets, praying that the pain would consume you entirely, that the night would devour your last ember, that silence would swallow your sobs. Because anything was better than this half-dead survival, this slow sinking in an ocean of endless agony.

You were a faded flower in a hanging garden. A shadow without light. A broken soul, lost between two worlds. And no one, ever, would come to save you.

Night was not falling : it was descending.

Like a funeral cloak, like a living shroud spread across the rooftops of the celestial palace, it bore neither star, nor moon, nor respite. The sky seemed to ooze a black, almost liquid substance, as if darkness itself were bleeding from the firmament. Even the sacred lanterns arranged around the medical pavilion had gone out one by one, in an almost religious silence. The air was heavy, laden with a strange, metallic scent, which had nothing to do with the medicinal roots hanging from the ceiling. It was the smell of a world turning upside down.

And at the heart of this chaos, Sunghoon. Frozen. On his knees. Mute.

Her fingers, once so sure, trembled above Wonyoung's inanimate body. The light that bathed them, usually a pure and restorative white, had taken on a sickly hue. Filaments of ink snaked beneath the celestial brightness, like veins of shadow infecting divine magic itself. Healing became contamination. The sacred, a curse.

And yet, Sunghoon didn't stop. Because if he stopped, he knew what he'd see. The mark. And it was just waiting to wake up. A pulse. Slow. Dull. Then another, stronger one. It struck his flesh like an ominous bell, like a call to pain etched into his bones. And finally the third—an invisible hammer blow, driven into his nerves.

The mark opened. Literally. Like a mouth. Like a scream. It cracked, expanded, stretched until his skin gave way. Blood flowed, thick, black, incandescent. It gushed from his wrist as if from a foreign heart, from another living being grafted onto his soul.

Sunghoon stifled a groan. His knees hit the floor. A spasm ran through him.

« No… »

But it was already too late.

Pain seeped into his body like acid. It rose through his veins, burned his lungs, and tightened his throat until it choked him. His breathing became erratic, ragged, as if he were drowning in an invisible liquid.

And in the depths of this torture, a name.

Your name.

Y/n.

His jaw tightened. Sunghoon bit his own tongue, hard, very hard, until the bite made blood run down his throat.

Why? Why was it your name that kept coming back? Why your face? Why this silhouette—yours—cloaked in the mist of his memory, both desired and cursed?

Sunghoon wanted to forget you.

He was supposed to forget you.

But he felt you. There. Somewhere. Far away, yet so close. And you were crying. You were in pain. He didn't have proof, but he knew it the way we know the rain is coming from the trembling of the leaves.

The pain you felt screamed through the mark like a sob from the depths of time. Like an unholy prayer. A plea addressed to no one. To him.

His magic became unstable, his celestial energy decaying, tearing apart under the force of this cursed resonance.

Sunghoon was going to get up. Join you. Cross the mountains, the forbidden places, the celestial chains. Even if it meant losing everything.

But then... A voice. A barely audible breath. Like an echo from the other side of life.

« Sunghoon… Is that you? »

He froze. His heart skipped a beat. His hands fell dead to his sides. His gaze, devoid of light, slowly rose to the source of the voice.

Wonyoung.

She was awake. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her body, so frail, seemed carried by a silk thread, ready to break at the slightest movement. But she was breathing. She was alive.

And suddenly, everything inside Sunghoon flickered.

The bond. The mark. Your name. Your suffering.

Everything was thrown into a sea of ​​confusion. Everything that had been tearing him apart a few seconds earlier was pushed into the background, because she was alive, and he had thought her lost.

Sunghoon approached her slowly, like a man crossing a field of ruins. He took her in his arms. She was already sobbing against his chest, her breath ragged, her body burning. He wanted to speak, but the words caught in his throat.

“Wonyoung… What happened?”

She coughed, spitting up a little blood. He handed her a bowl of water, which she frantically drained. Then she looked up, and he read something in her eyes he'd never seen before.

An ancient fear.

“The village… Nothing remains of it.” His voice was hoarse, raw. “A mist. Black. Dense. Living. It arrived without warning. It covered everything. Then… there was fire. The smell of blood. Screams. Howls…”

She collapsed against him. Tears were streaming from her wide-open eyes, as if she didn't dare close them anymore, afraid of seeing what she had experienced again.

“They're all dead, Sunghoon… All of them. Even the children. Even the old people. It was just me.” She screamed silently, her fists clenching on her tunic. Her whole body was shaking.

And Sunghoon… He felt anger rising. It rose. Dully. First like a burning in his stomach. Then it unfolded, vast, violent, unbearable. He closed his eyes. The mark pulsed again. And he knew. He knew what his heart refused to admit.

It was you.

Y/n.

It was your magic. This mist. This darkness. This chaos. This blood.

Maybe you did it unintentionally. Maybe you were just an unwitting weapon. But that didn't change the outcome.

You had killed. Again.

And Sunghoon… He loved you.

Sunghoon had opened his home to you. Sunghoon had kissed you. Sunghoon had seen you cry in the shadows and believed that his love would be enough to heal your wounds.

What a fool.

What a blind man.

He saw your face, the one from a few nights ago. Your fingers on his skin. That whisper against his mouth. Your ragged breath, that shiver he thought he shared. Sunghoon had seen you as fragile. He had thought you were human. But you were a curse. And he was only a man, too weak to stop.

He gritted his teeth until he heard the bone crack in his jaw. His magic bucked, out of control. He pushed Wonyoung away with fierce tenderness and laid her back down, gently. She was already asleep, exhausted from the confession.

Sunghoon stood up. And his gaze was no longer the same. Something inside him had died.

A fire. A faith. A light.

The next time he laid eyes on you… It wouldn't be to love you anymore. It would be to judge you. And this time, he wouldn't tremble.

Hēi Lián Gé (黑莲阁) — Black Lotus Pavilion

You've been back at the Black Lotus Pavilion for five whole days, but that return has only added shadows to the chasm gnawing at your soul. Every step on this familiar ground is a slap to your will to breathe, a bite of icy steel to your already bruised chest. Here, you thought you'd find refuge—a secret enclave outside of time, far from the poisonous venom of the White Wheel Palace. But peace would not rest its wings on your heart.

This place, this dark wooden dwelling with walls tattooed with dancing shadows, exudes a scent of memory and regret. The walls, imbued with the whispers of those who have gone before you, seem to weigh on your shoulders like an invisible weight. You have banished the name of the celestial—Park Sunghoon—from your mind, but it returns with every beat of your heart, like a blade too deeply planted to be extracted without pain.

You lay down on the old, varnished wooden deckchair, the one that creaks under the slightest movement, as if even the material refuses to accept your weight. Your bare skin, sunburned and drenched in cold sweat, clashes with the roughness of the wood, each roughness reminding you of your own vulnerability—a fragile balance between bruised flesh and bleeding soul. Your breath hitches and freezes, both heavy and shaky, on the verge of a muffled scream you barely hold back.

The wind, that traitor, plays with your untidy hair, its strands falling across your face like invisible chains. It caresses your skin like an icy hand, carrying the memories of sleepless nights, of lightless days. Its breath is a deadly cold that snakes through your bones, as if it wanted to finish you off or freeze you alive, imprisoned in this infinite silence.

Before you, the forest stretches out, a sea of ​​darkness where ancient trees, standing as silent sentinels, observe and judge. They are the motionless witnesses of a pain no one dares to name. Each dead leaf that flutters, fragile and uncertain, dances like a soul condemned to wander endlessly, prisoner of a past it cannot escape. The sky above this black sea is an ocean of lead, heavy, suffocating, like an open coffin ready to swallow you up.

You feel the bite of the moment—the wood beneath your body, the bland, acrid taste of chrysanthemum tea slowly fading on your tongue, the icy bite of the wind on the back of your neck, the sly caress that lights a black flame in your gut. Your fan, once a symbol of your mastery and grace, trembles in your hand, victim of an uncontrollable nervous tic, an absurd, chaotic dance without rhythm or end.

Your eyelids close with infinite heaviness, you seek refuge in oblivion, in the fragile illusion that is silence. But you know, deep down, that this calm is a lie. A cruel and fatal trap. This lie has a name, a face, a breath that resonates in your blood: Park Sunghoon.

You don't move as he approaches. You don't need to open your eyes to feel his presence freezing the air around you, tightening it into a steel cage. He's there, his rigid, cutting aura falling on you like a silent condemnation. He is that icicle of the heavens, motionless, perfect, uncompromising. The very breath of divine justice, a crystal sword suspended above your head.

And yet... You know. You've glimpsed the other side of the mask, the crack no one else sees. A secret, ancient pain, a deep wound that tears him apart from within, though he refuses to show it. Sunghoon carries his grief like a weapon, cold and sharp, hidden behind his stony gaze. He doesn't cry. He doesn't speak. But he bleeds. You never forget those who bleed.

The wind suddenly stops, as if terrified, and the world becomes heavier, more stifling.

You slowly open your eyes. Your eyelids flutter open to reveal this motionless figure. Your gaze meets his, hard, clear, burning with a cold flame. He stands there, erect, dignified, a living statue carved from crystal. His white hanfu with gold trim seems to float around him, but even perfection has its flaws—his sleeves are wrinkled, his forehead is beaded with sweat that the wind struggles to dry, his strands of black hair escape and caress his face like rebellious snakes.

“The icicle of heaven deigns to honor me with its presence…” you breathe, sarcasm dripping from each syllable. “What a beautiful day to die.”

Your smile is a cold blade, a sharp irony, a veil of pain and resentment.

You slowly place your fan on the wooden table, the dull sound like a death knell, and raise your cup of tea to your lips. You drink slowly, silently, as if this moment weren't his, as if you were standing somewhere else, far from him, far from his coldness.

But you should have known. Sunghoon won't stop there.

His voice falls, heavy and sharp, an implacable axe:

“Unclean woman… What have you done to the village of Qinglin?”

There is no nuance, no gentleness, only the dry and final condemnation.

Sunghoon's hand hits the table with a sharp thud. Your cup flies, topples, spilling its hot liquid like blood onto the dusty floor, the red pool spreading, sinister and silent, a macabre reflection of the unspoken truth.

You stare at him, and in that gaze, a shard of you cracks and shatters. A dull ache crushes your insides, invisible, unbearable, a dead weight that makes you stagger.

"You're tiring me out, ice block," you whisper through gritted teeth, your voice trembling with an icy anger that refuses to die down. "Why is any of this any of your business?"

A sob twists your throat, but you swallow the weakness. Not in front of him. He dared to cross the line of silence, to violate your fragile peace, to judge you as always, to accuse you as always, to crush you as always. This injustice is a blade that slashes at your heart, even if it beats only weakly beneath the black ashes of your despair.

You raise your head, your burning gaze piercing his steel eyes, and launch a poisoned arrow:

“Don't tell me you're worried about your lovely girlfriend… Or should I say, your ex-girlfriend?” A broken, raspy laugh, laden with pain and disdain, escapes your throat. The laugh is a silent scream, a breath of fire amidst the ice. You see it flicker, if only for a moment.

Sunghoon doesn't respond. His jaw tightens, his hand trembles imperceptibly.

And you, deep in your chest, a pain you refuse to name spreads. Jealousy? Sadness? Despair? You refuse to give it that power.

You're not jealous.

You're the one he betrayed before he even knew he loved you.

You are the one he wanted to save, but chose to condemn.

The wind rushes in again, violent, laden with dust and ash. Beneath this dying sky, the air seems to tear itself apart. The pain within you ignites into a black blaze, a fire that threatens to consume everything.

Your fingers dig into the lacquered wood of your fan, tense, white with tension. Your deep black hanfu floats around you like a veil of mourning.

Park Sunghoon stands there, majestic and terrifying, an ivory statue frozen in the storm. His eyes reflect a silent war: a dull anger, a deep melancholy, a fierce struggle between duty and desire, order and passion.

Without a word, he summons his sword, a blade of cold, sharp light. It is an extension of his unyielding will, a divine judgment hanging over you.

With a quick movement, he brings the sharp point to your throat. The pressure is light, almost a caress of icy metal, but suffocating. An icy shudder runs through your skin, a slight burn. A trickle of bright red blood escapes, slowly, drop by drop, a scarlet trail in the gloom.

"I will not let a sinner like you bring calamity to this world," he snarls, his voice thick with suppressed anger, a silent threat of storm.

You stand still, silent defiance burning in your eyes, ablaze with icy hatred. With a firm hand, you grasp the blade, ignoring the burn in your palm. Blood flows, hot drops on the cold metal, falling as an offering to this grim silence.

“You claim to want to save this world,” you whisper, your voice low, vibrating with pain and bitterness, “but you are unable to reach out to the one bleeding before you.” Each word is a blade, a blow against the wall of ice around his heart. 

“Hypocrite. Coward. You hide behind these celestial laws, this justice you brandish like a mask, but what you're running from is yourself. You're running from this marriage, from what you could have been, from this love that silently consumes you.” A harsh, bitter laugh escapes you, the pain in your chest burning like a black fire, but you refuse to bend, to cry. Not in front of him.

“Then do it. Kill me. If it will assuage your shame, your fear, your hatred. Kill me, and be free.”

Your fingers, frozen by visceral fear and abysmal exhaustion, finally release the blade of the sword that Sunghoon holds with terrible rigor, its cold steel resting on the delicate skin of your neck. This contact is a blast of icy wind that freezes your entire being, your spine stiffens as if it were trying to break, while a shudder of agony electrifies you from head to toe. 

Your muscles contract in a painful dance, but it is your mind, that fragile, cracked temple, that reels most violently, buffeted by the inner storm that rumbles dully.

Your short, uneven breaths beat against your ribs like hungry claws. The silence that envelops you, heavy and suffocating, is broken only by the high-pitched murmur of your sobs. They have not yet flowed, but burn beneath your skin like an invisible poison, torrents of liquid pain, secret, forcing their way into the shadows of your flesh.

Then, in that abyss of darkness and silent screams, you see—just for a moment, but that brief flash pierces you—a crack in the impassive mask he wears. The cold mask of the man you loved, or at least thought you loved. This crack is tiny, fragile, but it reveals all his pain: the dull regret that grips him deep inside, the invisible, incessant struggle against his own demons, a pain so ancient that it seems to have dug into his soul like a sharpened blade.

Sunghoon looks up at you. His pupils are black wells drowning in pent-up anger, resentment, and a silent pain that crushes you as much as it tears him apart. His fists clench, white with extreme tension, as if every nerve in his body is straining toward an explosion he's barely holding back. He's chained to this inner war, this fight he refuses to wage out loud, a prisoner of his own shadows and his heartbreaking pride.

Then, suddenly, the sword disappears, swallowed by a burst of cold light, as fleeting as life itself. A breath escapes your tight throat—a broken, trembling sob—as you collapse, broken, to the cold ground.

And it's there, in the depths of this silent chaos, that your gaze falls on the burning mark on his arm. It pulses with the force of a burning heart, burning flesh and blood. The black fire emanating from it slowly eats away at his skin, a living wound that bleeds in dark streaks onto the cold ground.

A moan, low and plaintive, almost human, escapes his throat. A strangled wail, barely a breath, that tears your heart into a thousand pieces. You wanted him broken. You wanted him to know what suffering was, to know the icy bite of despair, the bitter taste of the pain that has always eaten away at you. You wanted to see his ashes. But deep down, hidden beneath thick layers of anger and hatred, you know you love him. Too much. Too much to let him sink without reaching out to him. Too much not to buckle under the cruel weight of this poisonous bond.

You stand up, a frail figure caught in a freezing wind, trembling but determined. Your fan falls to the ground with a sharp clap that tears through the silence like a clap of thunder on a stormy night. Your hands seek his; this contact is your anchor in the storm. You grasp his hand, cold and weak, and with a clumsy gesture but filled with all the desperate tenderness you can muster, you roll up the sleeve of his hanfu.

The mark is there, black and split, bleeding, like a cruel mirror of your own silently bleeding heart. The metallic smell of blood, the burn of burning flesh, the palpable pain that unites you in a single invisible torture.

Sunghoon instinctively recoils, trying to flee this presence that tears him apart, to escape from your gaze that sees him, that illuminates him, that makes him vulnerable. He is a coward, yes. It is in this cowardice that he finds refuge, a fragile shelter where he cannot face the truth. He doesn't want you to see his face broken by the tears he refuses to shed, nor the anger that boils quietly, ready to consume everything.

But he can't run away. Not this time.

He stands there, motionless, his eyes fixed on yours. Your pupils, clouded with tears this time, no longer carry the anger of before but an infinite sadness, heavy as the starless night, a sadness that only love can inflict, that bittersweet pain that tears without healing.

His heart stops, suspended in this eternal silence.

"Is it... Is it my fault?" Your voice breaks, cracking, fragile like a branch under the snow. You stare at his bleeding arm, then at his drawn features, trapped in an invisible struggle between the man he is and the man he wants to be.

Sunghoon wants to reassure you, protect you, tell you that you're not responsible, that you're innocent. But no words leave his lips; his silence is a chasm more terrible than any accusation. In this void, you understand everything.

“I’m sorry…” you whisper, your throat tight with old, genuine grief.

Sunghoon doesn't know why you're apologizing. Yet when you pull him close, when you embrace him with the fragile strength of your broken love, a spark flickers in his eyes. A faint, wild glimmer of hope that whispers that one day, perhaps, you could be happy. That you could grow old together, silent, united, like those simple, mortal couples.

But Sunghoon knows it's just wishful thinking, a fragile illusion.

“Y/n…” His voice becomes hoarse, torn.

“If you must condemn me… Do it. But listen to me.” Your voice is a trembling breath as you release your grip, but don't step back, staying within reach of his hesitations. Your gazes lock, heavy with pain and unspoken words.

“I'm innocent. I know you don't believe me, that you don't trust me. But I, too, have the right to the presumption of innocence.” Your voice wavers. You look down, nervously biting your lip. Then, slowly, you raise your head, ready to reveal the truth you've hidden for so long. “I've done my research. You won't like what I'm about to tell you. But Wonyoung… She's not a mere mortal. She's chaos incarnate.”

And then, you reach out your hand. But it's not a gesture. It's a farewell. A summons. A pact with darkness. Your lips move, slowly, and what you speak is no longer a human language.

It's a forgotten breath from ancient kingdoms. A song that shouldn't exist. Grave. Fractured. Flayed. As if the world itself were choking under the weight of your truth.

The magic obeys. First, it's a wind. Slow. Frozen. Sharp like a blade of black jade. Then comes the mist. It creeps along the ground like a wounded beast. Thick. Heavy. Oozing. It rises, it surrounds your bodies, it erases the trees, the ground, the skies.

You no longer breathe the air of the world. You breathe oblivion. And then, the mirror rises. Not a mirror. But a wound. A nightmare eye. A gaping rift between dimensions, between reality and what we would have preferred never to see again. It throbs. It pulses. It bleeds a dark, almost carnal light. And then it opens—not like a door, but like a deep wound in the flesh of time.

And the memories come flooding back. Not like a story. But like a scream.

Qinglin. The village. Or what's left of it.

Impure red flames lick the collapsed roofs. The sky is inky, split by purple lightning. The ground is blackened by blood. Not red. Not scarlet. Black. Burnt. Stained by magic. It runs underground like a rabid beast. It oozes between the paving stones. It makes the walls tremble. 

And in this nightmare theater—the bodies. Small. Frail. Children. Eyes open. Frozen in terror. Their hands outstretched. Their charred limbs. Women clinging to their corpses. Men crucified in the air, suspended by chains of screaming spells. 

And in the center—Wonyoung. Or rather… What's left of her. A being consumed by shadow. Disfigured by dark magic. Her eyes are empty, hollowed out like two graves. Her smile is cracked to the temples. She laughs. A hollow, mechanical, morbid sound. And suddenly—she opens her stomach. Slowly. Deliberately. She traces symbols into her flesh. She mutilates herself before your eyes.

And in the mirror—in this perverse illusion—it's you holding the dagger. It's you she's imitating. You she's accusing. You she's sullying. And all of this… To keep Sunghoon away from you. To steal his gaze. His love. His soul.

The mirror closes. With a rattle. As if reality itself had just died.

And silence, then, is no longer silence. It is drowning. It is the exact moment when the heart stops beating before it starts again—or never starts again. It is nothingness breathing.

Sunghoon doesn't speak. Doesn't back away. Doesn't moan. But his body betrays him. His shoulders slump. His breath becomes short. Ragged. As if he's suddenly carrying the weight of a thousand deaths. His fists clench. His chin trembles. And his eyes—my god, his eyes—slowly close, with that desperate slowness warriors have when they finally accept their fate.

You want to say something. You want to catch up with him. Touch him. But he beats you to it.

His voice, when it falls, is not a word.

It's dizzying.

A bottomless pit where one falls endlessly.

It's a strangled wail, woven of blood and dust, slicing through the air like a black thread suspended between the jaws of a collapsing world. It doesn't strike your eardrums. It wraps around your heart and squeezes. Again. Again. Until you stop breathing.

And you understand. Because deep down... you were waiting for this question. Or rather: you were afraid it would come too late.

“Why… did you run away?”

But that's not a question. Not really.

It's an echo. A barely articulated plea. A fracture that speaks through the voice of a broken man, too proud to implore, too empty to pretend. It's not a blade. It's what remains after the blade. That silence that still bleeds, even when the wound seems closed.

And before you, it is not the Heavenly Judge. Not the sword of Heaven. Not the son of the Law, nor the living weapon of a world devoured by order.

It’s Sunghoon. Just Sunghoon.

The man.

The one you loved until you lost sleep, speech, and even your name. The one you could have hated if only you had loved him a little less. The one you fled not out of weakness... But because staying was slowly killing you.

And in his eyes—there is no rage, no pride, no justice. There is only fear. Raw. Unhealthy. Twisted. The fear of never having been enough. The fear that your love was a dream stolen from a life that didn't belong to him. The fear that if he lost you, it was because he unwittingly killed you. And worse… the fear that you never really loved him. Or that you stopped loving him when he became who he is.

But you know. You've always known. And now that the blood is pounding in your temples like a war drum, you can no longer remain silent. Even if your throat is tight. Even if your soul is crumbling.

You breathe in.

You're bleeding inside.

And you speak.

“I didn’t run away…” Your voice isn’t a voice. It’s a rattle. A rattle of agony. Your knees are shaking. Your mouth is dry. Your hands are cold as death. “I left.”

And you see him collapse. Not physically. Not yet. But his gaze. His gaze becomes empty. Like a fortress crumbling in the rain. A thousand-year-old stone wall eaten away by salt and shame. He doesn't even blink. He takes it in. He absorbs it. And you feel each word sink into Sunghoon like an arrow.

You should keep quiet. But if there's one thing you've learned from loving him... It's that silence kills.

"I didn't leave because I didn't love you."

Sunghoon flexes. Barely. But you see it. His shoulders, usually so straight, tilt a millimeter.

And then you tell the truth. Whole. Dirty. Heartbreaking.

“I left… because I loved you too much.”

You don't have time to breathe in. You're not allowed to cry. Because you have to keep going.

“You weren't looking at me anymore. You were sleeping by my side, but your mind… It was elsewhere. With her. With Wonyoung. Even your silences, they no longer belonged to me.”

You're shaking.

“And I… I was there. Motionless. On my knees before your absence. Screaming silently. Consuming myself in anticipation.” Your voice breaks. “I was jealous. Jealous of what I couldn’t be. Of what she represented. And I was ashamed. Ashamed of being human. Ashamed of needing you more than you needed me. Ashamed of loving a man who no longer had room for me.”

And there you see it. That quiver in his lower lip. That dark glow growing in his pupils.

You take a step back.

“You no longer made room for me in your life, Sunghoon. And I understood… That I was becoming a burden. A speck of dust. A weakness. And I loved you too much to become a weakness for you.”

The silence that falls after your words is so thick it could kill.

But it's not Sunghoon who moves first. It's you who staggers when he falls to his knees. His knees hit the ground. Brutally. Like a verdict.

Sunghoon. The man with hands covered in sentence. The chosen one of heaven. The weapon of the world. On his knees before you. Not to beg. Not to be forgiven. But because his legs no longer carry him. Because your absence has cut him down more violently than a thousand wars.

His hands cling to your dress like a prayer. His forehead rests against your stomach. And then, in a whisper that comes from the abyss:

“You don’t need to be jealous, my little judge…” Her voice clears her throat. It’s hoarse, destroyed, drenched in ash and pain. “You are my universe. My chaos. My breath. Even when I lost myself, it was you I was looking for.”

Sunghoon finally looks up at you. And in his gaze—those aren't tears. They're storms. Years of unspoken words. Sustained torments. And that tenderness. Immense. All-consuming.

“During those five days, I died. Not once. Hundreds of times. Every time I woke up. Because in my dreams… I saw you. You laughed. You were there. But when I woke up… All that remained was the smell of your absence. The emptiness of your warmth. And I thought… That I wouldn't survive.”

You hiccup.

Sunghoon continues, his voice breaking:

“I dreamed of you. Pregnant with my children. In a place without war, without oaths. I dreamed of a world where I could touch you without having to punish myself. Where I could love you without having to judge you.” And then—her voice falters. Her eyes moisten again. “I love you, Y/n. I love you like a curse. I love you enough to tear my heart open to the bone. I love you enough to extinguish me so that you can shine. And I beg you… Don’t leave me in this shadow. I can change. I want to change. For you.”

He's there, prostrate. Offered. Sacrificed. Then you fall in turn. Your body no longer belongs to you. You kneel. Your hands frame his face. And there, you force him to look at you.

"I don't want you to change."

Sunghoon blinks, lost.

You breathe, "I want you. Not a perfect husband. Not a repentant god. You, with your silences. You, with your darkness. You, with your pride, your violence, your sick love. You... With your heart that still beats for me."

And then you kiss him. But it's not a kiss. It's a rush. An affront. A scream. A shipwreck.

Your mouth collides with his like blades meet blades atop a battlefield—not to seduce, but to survive. You don't kiss him like you'd find a lover. You kiss him like you'd catch a condemned man you love too much to let die.

Your teeth catch his lip. Your tongue invades him. You bite him. You drink him. You tear him apart.

And Sunghoon answers.

Gods… He answers.

His hands, initially frozen by shock, roughly grab you by the waist. Not gently. With the urgency of a man who has lost too much, waited too long, dreamed too much. He presses you against him, so hard your ribs protest, your breath hitches, your body struggles to keep pace with a heart beating on the verge of bursting.

It's not a kiss of love. It's a kiss of instinct. Of agony. Of obsession.

Your fingers dig into the nape of his neck, into his black hair soaked with sweat, fever, and nightmares. And you pull him closer. As if you wanted to drown him inside you. As if his salvation could only come in your mouth, in your blood, in your ravaged devotion.

Sunghoon moaned—A hoarse, almost painful sound. Not of pleasure. But of need. The raw, brutal need to never be alone again. To have you, here, all of you. Flesh, soul, abyss included.

His mouth opens beneath yours, but Sunghoon doesn't lead. You're the one who dominates. You're the one who ravages. You're the one who demands accountability from the hollow of his tongue. You kiss him like someone screams. Like someone hits. Like someone cries. 

And Sunghoon offers himself. His back arches. His knees tighten beneath you, pressed into the damp earth. His hands, large and trembling, slide down your back, as if he wanted to carve his nails, his imprint, his last prayer. It's not erotic. It's animal. It's spiritual. It's too much. Far too much. And yet, not enough. Sunghoon wants more. He wants your throat. Your breath. Your sighs. Your pain. He wants the child you never carried. The future he ruined. The forgiveness he doesn't deserve.

Sunghoon wants everything you deny this world—and he wants you to give it to him, right here, right now, in the hollow of your mouth, in the blaze of your rage.

And you give it to him. You give him your anger. You give him your abandonment. You give him your grief, your love, your broken silence. You don't need words. You don't want them.

This kiss is a testament. An oath without promise. A hand-to-hand combat between two ruined souls.

And Sunghoon… He capsizes. He falls into you, against you, for you. His arms embrace you like a last refuge, as if he wanted to lock you away against his skin, in his breath, beneath his bones.

And his lips—those lips that have judged you so much, ignored you so much, burned you so much—finally become yours again. Supple. Fierce. Painful.

You feel his hand slide down the back of your neck, trembling, almost feverish. He's not guiding you. Sunghoon isn't imposing anything on you. He's begging you. And you understand. That it's not your kiss he's receiving. It's your newfound faith. It's your flame. It's your choice. So Sunghoon cries into your mouth. Not visible tears. But by the tension of his jaw. By the heaves of his stomach. By the way he presses his forehead against yours between gasps, like a man out of breath, out of life, out of love.

“Y/n…” Sunghoon moans your name between kisses, like a prayer. Like a condemnation. Like a sacred fire.

And you fold your legs around his waist, both kneeling in this black earth, this field of ruins turned altar. You cling to Sunghoon like a ship in a storm. And you continue to kiss him. For a long time. Fiercely. Tirelessly. Until the night itself seems to close in around you.

Until all you hear is his breath, hoarse and broken, mingling with yours. Until his fingers slip under the fabric of your neck, searching for warmth, for life, for reality—You. 

And in that kiss, you finally feel it. The silent cry he never dared to utter. The pain he kept silent for too long. The love he locked away in the folds of a heart too proud. And you know. That Sunghoon never forgot you. Not for a second. Not for a breath. Not for a night. That he punished himself for your absence. That he hated himself for having been loved by you. That he dreamed of dying… But only after seeing you one last time.

So you open your eyes. And you look at him, there, a few inches away. His face flushed, his lips swollen, his pupils dilated by withdrawal, by ecstasy, by fear.

And you whisper, your mouth still glued to his, your tears mingled with his:

“If you lose me again… I won’t come back.”

Sunghoon grabs you. His breath catches. And with one last kiss, almost gentle this time—a touch, a whisper of lips—he answers:

"Then I won't let you go. Even if heaven punishes me. Even if I have to sell my soul."

And in this silent oath, your united brows, your bruised lips, your hearts finally freed from silence - the world, at last, falls silent. 

There's no more pact. No more war. No more Wonyoung. No more blood. No more revenge. Only you. Two souls in tatters. Two hearts on fire. Two lost beings, who have stopped running. 

And in the night, in this ravaged embrace, a love is born stronger than the gods themselves.

Juébié Tái (诀别台) — The Terrace of the Final Separation

The horizon, once a clear line between heaven and earth, was now nothing but a deep quagmire, an ocean of blood mixed with ash. A red, visceral, almost living abyss—as if the earth itself were bleeding, sliced ​​by a wound no hand could close. This was no simple sunset, nor a natural end, but the last gasp of a torn world, a burning farewell hurled in the face of deaf gods. The sky seemed to vomit up its own heart, saturated with a dull anger, an ancient despair, a visceral resentment that only war can breed.

The heavy, low clouds, black as the entrails of a dead dragon, poured their acrid smoke over the landscape, weaving a web of doom. Each ray of light tore the scarlet horizon into bursts of fire and soot, like glaring scars on the skin of a dying giant. That deep, thick red pulsed in the air—a hue of farewell, of broken promises, of consumed souls.

A gloomy wind blew through the ruins of the Juébié Tái temple, once a sanctuary of peace and light, now a silent tomb of dead illusions. The wind carried with it the stifled sighs of the dead—invisible ghosts slipping between the cracked stones, carrying with them faded dreams and torn oaths. Dead leaves swirled in a dance of death, scattering across the cracked paving stones like a shower of dying ashes, witnesses to an end come too soon.

In the heart of this desolate landscape, a figure stood, motionless like a statue carved in the night. Sunghoon.

He stood there, frozen, like a warrior worn to the bone, marked by the weight of years of internal struggles far crueler than those waged outside. Every tense muscle, every held breath, vibrated with a dull tension ready to explode. The silence around him was not absence, but an oppressive cage filled with suppressed anger, buried pain.

His shadow, long and menacing, stretched across the shattered stones of the temple, drawn by the last rays of a glowing, dying sun. This sun refused to illuminate his face, as if afraid to reveal the invisible scars, the deep wounds etched in his soul. His steely gaze, icy and unfathomable, was a restless sea of ​​shadows and secrets, a night where even the moon would have hesitated to land.

The sword strapped to his back seemed to pulse in unison with his pent-up rage, vibrating beneath his dark tunic with a cruel glow, ready to spring forth like a venomous snake, to spill a torrent of pain and blood. The blade, cold as death, caught the faint light and sent it back in menacing flashes.

Sunghoon didn't move, but his very stillness was a statement—a silent warning that beneath that apparent stone lurked a raging storm, ready to sweep everything away.

Then, slowly, his winter eyes rose. They tore themselves from an abyss of solitude and scanned the gloom before him with icy intensity, until at last they encountered a flickering figure.

She was there.

Wonyoung.

Fragile. Broken. And yet, painfully beautiful in its desolation. Her hanfu, once bright and silky, was torn to shreds like a funeral shroud, stained with dust, dried blood, and silent tears that time would not wash away. Every step she took seemed torture, a struggle against an invisible weight that chained her, shackled her, pulled her toward the depths of this waking nightmare.

Her hands trembled, carrying the burden of the world, her lips quivered under the weight of an oppressive silence, heavy with secrets and repressed pain. She wanted to scream, to tear the sky apart with her cries, to shatter the night with her despair, but she no longer found the strength to beg, even in silence.

His breath, short and panting, was a broken prayer, a whisper of life in this theater of death.

The world around them seemed to hold its breath, suspended on the fragile thread of their encounter.

« Sunghoon… »

The simple word, barely more than a breath, escaped her lips like a hoarse whisper, a fragile tremor on the verge of extinction. It was both a plea and a condemnation, a flickering flame in an eternal winter wind. The name carried all the pent-up pain of so many years, the weight of a love twisted by betrayal and blood. It was a glowing ember, an open wound that time had failed to heal.

Her gaze, tired and dull, finally met Sunghoon's. But this gaze was no longer that of a man she had known. It was a frozen chasm, a black abyss in which all the shards of humanity had drowned, a desert of ice where no flowers grew. In his eyes, the fire had gone out, replaced by an implacable coldness, an armor of steel tempered in resentment and despair. Sunghoon didn't answer. He couldn't. His silence was an impenetrable wall, a silent refusal, the death of all tenderness.

Then, slowly, terribly slowly, like a tightrope walker walking the sharp edge of fate, Sunghoon took a step back. This movement seemed sealed by a grim destiny, a sentence carved in stone. Every millimeter of retreat was a wound inflicted on Wonyoung's heart, an even deeper fracture. Sunghoon was moving away from her not only physically, but from his entire life, from everything they had ever been.

Sunghoon's voice finally broke through the silence, icy, sharp, honed like a blade that cuts flesh with precision. It cleaved the frozen air, shattering the fragile ephemeral of their shared memories, tearing at the fragile fabric that had united them.

"Don't come any closer."

It wasn't a request, nor advice, but a guillotine, a final decision. The simple order resonated in Wonyoung's chest like an iron hammer hitting an anvil. The weight of the words crashed down on her, crushing what life remained in her veins.

Her heart exploded silently, a firework of sharp shards that embedded themselves in her flesh and soul. The pain was no longer physical; it was visceral, burning, heartbreaking. It consumed everything, gnawed at the last fibers of her being, lacerating the fragile veil she still wore.

The air around them suddenly became thin, as if the universe itself had decided to abandon them, suspending their breaths, suspending time. Emptiness seeped in everywhere, icy, voracious, ready to swallow them up.

“This situation… Disgusts me,” Sunghoon breathed, his voice choked with deep hatred, a silent venom that had been eating away at his insides for years. “I didn’t expect this. Not from you.”

A dry, hoarse, bitter laugh slipped through his lips—the broken laugh of a man forged in the depths of silence and pain. A laugh that was both a plea and a farewell.

“Years, Wonyoung… Years.” Sunghoon swallowed his rage like a deadly poison, like a bitter medicine he had to absorb to survive. “And because I respect those years, I’m going to let you go. Without consequences. Today.”

Sunghoon took a heavy step forward, laden with faded promises and open wounds. But it was Wonyoung who stepped back this time, her legs trembling, fragile, about to buckle under the weight of a past too heavy. She felt anchored to a cold, dead earth, unable to escape this unbearable pain.

Her breath broke, shattering into a thousand shards in her throat, an echo of despair that seemed like it could consume her entirely.

"But listen to me carefully..." Sunghoon's voice, when it finally broke the silence, was hoarse, as if torn by years of silence and hurt. "If you ever cross that line. If you ever come close again to what I swore to protect..."

The words crashed down between them, heavy as invisible blades, sharp as a grim promise. Sunghoon's eyes darkened, hardened, becoming that hardened metal that cannot be bent, a sword raised in the dark, ready to strike.

“I will not turn away my eyes. I will not tremble. I will raise my sword against you, and I will not fail.”

The wind moaned in the ruins, a low sob that seemed to carry the voices of the dead, a dirge suspended in time, a final farewell to what might have been. Wonyoung felt that weight crash down on her heart, an icy storm that froze her insides. She wasn't crying yet, but in her wide-open eyes shone a light worse than fear—the agony of betrayal, the suffocating weight of incomprehension.

Her legs buckled, wobbled, but she took another step, trapped in a nightmare that refused to go away.

“A… relationship…” she whispered, her voice cracking, shattered into a thousand pieces. “You mean… our relationship.”

Every breath was a dagger in the pit of his chest, every breath a torture that his body rejected but could not escape.

“The one you destroyed with your own hands. For her. For that cursed witch to whom you offered what you promised me. Your heart.”

She staggered, her fingers seeking his, not in anger, nor in gentleness, but with that empty embrace of a hope that no longer existed, a painful pressure, a last breath of life in a still-warm corpse.

“You swore to me… You promised me that you would never forget me. That despite the chaos, despite the war, our souls would remain linked. That your gaze would never change.”

But Sunghoon didn't answer. His steely gaze, cold and distant, scrutinized her like one observing a ghost, an illusion one would want to banish.

She felt the abyss opening beneath her feet. The tearing, the black hollow that swallowed everything.

“You lied to me, Sunghoon. You betrayed me like a blade in your back. You left me. Abandoned me. Forgotten me. And you dare speak of justice? Of morality?” Wonyoung’s voice rose, heartbreaking, a burning howl that tore through the night and into his own heart. It was fire and ashes, anger and despair mingled in one incandescent scream.

“Don't tell me you cared about me. Don't tell me you suffered. Because I… I waited for you. In silence. In the shadows. In blood. I sacrificed everything. And you?” She laughed, a dry, bitter, stillborn laugh, a broken shard, a shard lost in the emptiness of a shattered soul. “You ran away. You watched my collapse without lifting a finger.”

Sunghoon looked at her again, implacable, merciless, his eyes cold, like frozen glass. Not an ounce of trembling, not a sign of pity.

"No. I never loved you." The words were like a sword cut, slicing through flesh, tearing through flesh, leaving a gaping void where a heart still beat. "I was nothing to you, Wonyoung. And you were nothing to me."

Sunghoon took a step back, moving away from her like a bad dream you want to shake off.

“You were just a reflection. A shadow of what I could have become if I had embraced the darkness.”

The silence stretched between them, thick, crushing, laden with the echo of a pain too raw.

Then Sunghoon slowly turned his back, abandoning this last bond that united them.

"Find someone who can look at you without throwing up at the thought of the dead people you're dragging around. I can't. I won't. I'll never forgive you."

The wind grew stronger, howling through the ruins, carrying his words away like a cursed oath suspended in nothingness.

“Atoned… That’s all you have left. Until your last night, until your last breath. Pray that the heavens have mercy, for I have none left.”

His departure was a blast of icy wind, an implacable end.

Wonyoung fell. His knees hit the cold stone, his back bent, fragile and broken like a broken bow. His face was lost in his trembling hands, in that infinite solitude.

A dull, silent, nameless cry burst from the depths of her being, forged in the dust, ashes and pain of a world she had just lost forever.

The last glimmer of a murdered love.

And, in a breath, a murmur of agony:

"If she hadn't existed... Maybe... Just maybe... You would have loved me, too."

But there was only silence.

Such night.

Such void.

Bai Lun Yan (白轮殿) — The Palace of the White Wheel

The Wheel Room was bathed in a murky gloom, broken only by the flickering glow of a few red lanterns suspended from rusty chains. The air was heavy, saturated with old sweat, musk, dried blood, and datura. Each breath seemed to collide with the oozing walls of forgotten desires. It was like entering a womb—living, warm, obscene.

And you, you were offered.

Pressed against the Wheel like a condemned woman, like a virgin ready to be sacrificed to a god she herself had summoned. The black wood, engraved with ancient glyphs and dead curses, bit into your bare skin. Your arms were raised, tense, your muscles trembling, your fingers clenched in the grooves of the thousand-year-old wheel. Your hanfu, torn in places, slid slowly from your shoulders, revealing your taut stomach, your heaving chest, and lower still—your pussy, naked, swollen, glistening with anticipation. Open like an offering. Vibrant like a living scar.

And he—Sunghoon—was there.

On my knees before you.

Not as a lover. Not as a servant. But as a devoted executioner, ready to implode you, piece by piece.

Sunghoon looked down at you, his eyelids half-closed, his breathing already erratic, as if he were holding himself back from devouring you too quickly. And then, he dove. His tongue found your clitoris in one swift stroke—like a saber cut. You arched your back so hard the pain took your breath away, but the pleasure swept it away immediately. He licked like a thirsty man, as if your pleasure were the only elixir capable of saving him. His tongue swirled, slid, felt, searching every millimeter of flesh inside you. And he didn't just lick: he sucked, growled against your sex, nibbled just enough to make your body arch even more.

You were dirty. You were sublime.

You were broken.

Strings of drool stretched from your parted lips to your chin. You gasped. You cried unintentionally. Your legs trembled, twitched, your stomach contracted in an uncontrollable spasm. And Sunghoon… He moved his hands up your thighs. Slowly. Exasperatingly slowly. His fingers dug violently into your flesh, leaving painful, red marks. Then he yanked your legs apart. Your foot found itself on his shoulder, spread-eagled before him like a captured slave.

And then he bit you. Right there. On your already swollen clitoris. A precise, sadistic bite.

You are screaming.

And Sunghoon whispered against your soaked skin:

“You want me to break you here, on this Wheel? You want me to ruin you?”

Then he slid a finger inside you. Slowly. Rough, hot, merciless. He didn't let you adjust—he pushed in all the way to your palm, then he moved. Slowly. Then harder. Then faster. Your inner wall sucked in that finger like a living sinkhole. You were on fire.

Sunghoon added a second finger, sharply. And you cried out again, your head slamming against the wheel. Your body bucked—and he held you, tight, too tight. His fingers were now moving at an animal pace. And then a third. Inside you. Entirely. He was fucking you with his hand, fucking you to the core.

And meanwhile—his tongue never stopped.

Sunghoon let his chin rub against you, let his saliva mix with your juices. And you were dripping. You were a river. A tide. A tidal wave of desire.

The sound of his fingers sliding in and out of you was indecent. A wet, sticky, extremely erotic sound. The floor was becoming slippery. The stone beneath you was stained. And Sunghoon was growling between your thighs like a rutting beast.

"You have a pussy made to be devoured. You stink of sex. You're crying so I can open you up even more."

And you were crying, yes. With pleasure. With shame. With desire. Your eyes watered, your thighs trembling. You didn't even know if you wanted to run away or be killed right there.

Then, abruptly, Sunghoon pushed his fingers deeper, curved them—and you exploded.

The orgasm pierced you like a poisoned blade. You screamed. You began to squirt, to ejaculate like a fury. Powerful, uncontrollable jets, spurting against his mouth, on his face, on his neck. He barely pulled back, grabbed your pussy with both hands, and leaned down to drink. To drink it all. He swallowed, he gulped loudly, moans rising from his throat as if he were choking on your pleasure.

And Sunghoon continued.

He was still licking. He lapped at your soaking wet pussy, cleaning it with horrible tenderness, the patience of a monster. He kissed you. He sucked on your intimate lips. He pushed his tongue inside you to collect every last drop.

Then he finally stopped. Slowly. Very slowly.

And stood up.

His chest was heaving. His chin was shiny. His neck was dripping. His mouth—covered with you. And in his eyes, there was nothing human anymore.

"You taste divine, my little judge..." he said, his voice hoarse like a death rattle.

Sunghoon lifted two fingers covered in your juices and brought them to your mouth. You opened your lips wide. You sucked them slowly. One by one. Then both together. You pushed them all the way into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks, rolling your tongue like a learned whore. He moaned. A low, painful whimper.

"Are you hungry?" he said. He leaned down, his chest brushing against your burning stomach. "Me too."

And then he grabbed you roughly by the back of the neck and kissed you. A wild kiss. A brutal kiss. His tongue invaded your mouth. He tasted your pleasure on your tongue. He rubbed himself against it like a wild animal. His hand slid to his belt, which he undid with a brutal gesture. The hanfu opened.

You placed your hands on his bare, taut, veiny torso. And lower down—you saw his cock. Erect. Long. Wide. Throbbing. Slightly curved. A droplet beaded from its tip, and you saw it slide slowly down his shaft.

Sunghoon was ready.

And you couldn't take it anymore.

Your hand slid, slow and trembling, like a snake exploring offered flesh, first brushing against the smooth skin of his belly, that cold, hard surface sculpted by years of combat and discipline. The coldness of the polished stone beneath your palm contrasted with the dull, menacing heat rising within you, a latent fire flowing beneath your skin like magma ready to overflow. Your finger descended, almost groping, to the hard, taut bulge throbbing against your palm, a promise of destruction and ecstasy, a sharpened weapon that already made you tremble.

Sunghoon's breath was raspy, laden with suppressed impatience, and the thick silence of the night seemed to hold its breath as well. The tension hanging in the air was palpable, a rope stretched to its limit, ready to snap like an executioner's whip.

But before you could fully surrender, your hand slid lower, eager, his wrist closing roughly around yours. His grip was firm, commanding, undeniably powerful, yet within that raw strength, there was a strange sweetness, a silent oath that only your bodies could understand. No need for words. No need for promises. Just the certainty that this battle was not just a war of flesh, but a war of torn souls, chained in a cruel fate.

Sunghoon lifted you then, seemingly effortlessly, as if you were mist, a feather abandoned to the wind. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, your arms clinging to his strong shoulders, as he carried you to the Wheel—that black, icy circle that seemed to absorb all light. He set you down with surgical precision, your bare skin hitting the cold surface. The contact lasted a split second, enough to take your breath away. A hoarse, muffled cry escaped your throat, a mixture of astonishment, fear, and burning desire.

Your heart pounded, a war drum in your chest, as the weight of his body crushed you against the Wheel, locking your body in an embrace as cruel as an oath. This weight was both threat and promise—a prison and a sanctuary.

Suddenly, Sunghoon's hand lit up with a vibrant, unearthly white glow. A cold flame burst from his fingers, filling the space with a spectral light that made your mind flicker. Your eyes blurred, went out, engulfed in a night blacker than the deepest ink, an absolute void, an absolute nothingness. Celestial magic had just stolen your vision, condemning you to total darkness.

You were blind.

But you felt it. Oh yes, you felt it.

His hot breath brushing the back of your neck, his fingers digging into your flesh, scratching with a ferocious gentleness. His pelvis pressing, forcing its hardness against your vulnerable stomach, the burning line of his cock rising against your skin like a burning blade. His desire consumed you, unleashed, wild, unstoppable.

A dark smile split your lips, carnivorous, a flash of provocation in the silence of the night.

“Block of ice…” you whispered, your voice trembling, saturated with desire and defiance. “You’re playing a dangerous game, you know… Fucking your blind wife, hanging from that cursed wheel, which could turn at any moment… Aren’t you afraid she’ll end up crushed?” Your tone was sweet venom, a slow poison that flowed between you, a challenge thrown into the gloom. But beneath that provocation slid a fierce expectation, a visceral need.

Your hand moved then, exploring his torso like a lover eager to discover every secret. You brushed against every tense muscle, every invisible scar, tracing furrows of fire beneath his skin. Then, with a cruel gesture, you let your nails sink into his flesh, scratching, marking, drawing red lines, thin but deep. A hoarse, almost bestial rattle rose from his throat—the awakening of a wounded, excited, hungry beast.

You bit your lip, biting and wild, happy with this answer.

“You’re a bad husband,” you breathed, a hot breath that brushed against his lips, sliding down his tense jaw. “So… bad.”

Your fingers found the back of his neck, digging in like hooks, and you pulled gently, eliciting a deep moan. His body crushed against you, every muscle tense, his hard, demanding cock pressed against your stomach, demanding, hungry.

Your head was spinning, your soul was burning, and the fever was rising inside you like a black tide.

Then, his voice hoarse, low, almost a growl:

"I should have gagged you..."

Without warning, Sunghoon skewered you brutally, with a sharp, deep, merciless thrust. A wild cry escaped your throat—a mixture of astonishment, delicious pain, and obscene pleasure. Your body arched violently, oscillating between heartbreak and ecstasy; his cock was a sword tearing you apart from the inside, a burning blade that marked your flesh forever.

Sunghoon gave you no respite. No time to adjust. His all-consuming urgency, his insatiable hunger, pulverized you.

Every thrust of his hips promised destruction and rebirth. The erratic rhythm of his movements tore through the air saturated with sweat and incense, fever and cum. The Wheel vibrated beneath your bound bodies, each impact resonating like a war drum.

You wanted to flee, but your body, furious and revolted, rose up with every movement, seeking to receive it, to provoke it, to demand it.

You wanted to scream at the heavens, to break the silence, but only hoarse moans, sighs of delicious pain and adoration escaped your mouth. You were both submissive and queen, prisoner and sovereign.

Your hands skidded across his broad back, clinging to it, clawing at the skin with a savage rage. You dug and dug again, until blood gushed forth, hot and salty. He groaned, not a gasp of pain, but a primal cry of pleasure, a bestial explosion. Sunghoon loved this savagery. This struggle. He loved dominating you, crushing you, losing you.

You responded to every movement with ferocious jerks, pelvic undulations that shattered what little restraint he had left. You were nothing but fire, burning flesh, madness incarnate.

You were his hell, his heaven, his downfall.

Then Sunghoon gripped your hips with beastly strength, his fingers digging in like talons, pulling you closer, deeper, more violently. You felt every inch of him penetrate you, tear you apart, melt you.

An explosive cry, a heart-rending rattle, escaped your throat—a wild, black orgasm, an infinite fall into an abyss of pleasure and pain. Your body tensed, convulsed; the Wheel may have been turning, but you saw nothing. You felt only Sunghoon.

But it wasn't over.

No.

There would never be an end.

"You're dripping..." Sunghoon spat between wild thrusts, his voice raspy, saturated with a brutal thirst, an unbridled desire that seemed to want to reduce you to incandescent ashes. Each word was a blade, sharp, ferocious, a promise of mingled pain and pleasure, a silent pact sealed in the fire of your intertwined bodies.

"You scream like a fucking, sacrificial virgin, trembling, offered up, burning to the core. Do you want me to ruin you, to smash you against this Wheel until it turns again and again, so that your screams become the dirge of your flesh?"

Your breath crashed against your throat—short, raspy, ragged—like a tumultuous torrent drowned in a boiling sea of ​​ecstasy and pain. You nodded, mute, unable to formulate anything but raw, wild, almost bestial gasps, wordless cries, silent pleas of fire and surrender.

Without warning, Sunghoon grabbed your hips with an iron grip, his fingers digging into your damp skin, biting into the flesh with the controlled violence of a hunting beast. Every tense muscle beneath his palm vibrated with a savage, precise power. He lifted you slightly, holding you in a position where you were entirely open, vulnerable, offered like a flower torn by the storm of steel roaring within him.

His cock, hard as a sharp saber blade, penetrated your tender flesh with calculated, merciless cruelty. The angle was perfect, incisive, each thrust a cruel explosion in your burning flesh, an exquisite tear that tore a primal, brutal, heart-rending scream from you, echoing against the cold, damp walls of the room. This cry mingled with Sunghoon's guttural growls, like a furious warrior on the rampage, a savage symphony of destruction and creation.

The rhythm he imposed was frantic, wild, a sensual carnage where your bodies collided with an almost sacrificial violence. The ancient wood of the Wheel vibrated beneath you, each impact drumming out the secret war tearing at your skin, each thrust sculpting your pain into pleasure, your suffering into ecstasy. Sweat slid in burning rivulets down your entwined skin, carrying with it the last vestiges of all restraint, all fear.

Then, suddenly, everything slows down.

His strokes grew heavier, deeper, slower, each thrust a painful promise, a silent oath of domination and devour. The fire consuming your body still burned, but dull, insidious, an exquisite torture fevering your insides, a slow fire that trickled beneath your skin.

His hands slid down, exploring your sweaty, panting skin, his fingers brushing, caressing, until they reached that burning spot, that incandescent focus: your clitoris, feverish, swollen, so painfully sensitive that it made you teeter on the edge of madness and ecstasy.

Then Sunghoon's fingers fell upon this offered flesh with the methodical cruelty of a mad craftsman. They rubbed, pinched, and mistreated this source of your pleasure with an almost sadistic insistence, a slow, delicious torture that made you scream without restraint, a wild, wrenching cry escaping from your entrails like a raging torrent.

The Wheel vibrated beneath the scream, capturing it, echoing it, a dark, haunting litany in the vast silence of the room. Your blood pounded in your temples, your heart hammered against your ribcage like a war drum, and yet it was your body betraying you, burning in that forbidden fire.

“Come,” Sunghoon breathed, his voice raspy, low, a command charged with dominance and dark passion, a hot whisper in your ear. “Cry out for me. Squirt, my Queen. Show me your burning fire, let the night tremble beneath your tear.”

You then gave in, to Sunghoon, to yourself, to this maelstrom of pain and pleasure.

Your body exploded suddenly, devastated by an orgasm of raw intensity, an incandescent flash that struck you from the inside out, sweeping every fiber of your being away in a burst of merciless spasms. Your muscles contracted so violently that you felt as if you were tearing yourself apart, tearing yourself away, disintegrating, only to be reborn with that wild scream.

Your hot, burning juice splashed his stiff cock, trickled down his powerful hips, stained the icy surface of the Wheel, blending your bodies in a wild, sacred, chaotic union, a hellish dance of flesh and blood.

You could feel the consuming hunger in his dark eyes, the insatiable fire in his throat that swallowed your come like a hungry, voracious, inhuman beast.

Then, in a slow, almost possessive movement, he brought his burning face closer, licking with cruel slowness the burning hollow between your breasts, where the thin, fragile skin burned beneath his rough tongue. The contrast between velvety softness and fiery bite sent a wild shiver down your spine, a shiver that tore you apart, crushed you, set you ablaze.

Without warning, Sunghoon bit your neck with restrained, controlled violence, a flash of pain and pleasure that set a new fire exploding in every nerve. A sharp, delicious pain that sharpened your pleasure, chained you to his bites, to his hot breath, to his relentless domination, to this wild force that tore you apart slowly, surely, until the ultimate ecstasy.

You were nothing but at his mercy, a willing prisoner of the burning fire he lit within you, until you were nothing more than a broken breath, an incandescent body, a painful and proud promise of what was yet to come.

But he wasn't finished.

He possessed you with a sovereign brutality, tearing every inch of you apart with every thrust, every blow, like a warrior wielding his blade in a battle of shadow and blood. His hips pulsed, crushing your body, breaking your will, sculpting your pain into pleasure, your suffering into ecstasy.

Your body arched, writhed beneath the relentless force of his assaults, every cry, every moan, every short breath becoming a savage offering to this silent duel between domination and surrender. The Wheel vibrated beneath your bestial union, your blood mingled with your sweat, the heavy, acrid odors of primal desire filling the saturated air.

Each spasm tore you deeper, until you were nothing more than a trembling, submissive shadow—but triumphant, sovereign in this secret war of flesh and blood, bearing the burning scars of this carnal battle with a fierce and desperate pride.

The cold wind blew around you, carrying away your wild cries, mingling them with the darkness, the mystery, the endless night of your forbidden pact.

And you couldn't take it anymore. Your breath, short and ragged, burned your chest with a black, dull, and merciless fire. Every tense muscle, every fiber of your being vibrated under the brutal and merciless rhythm that Sunghoon imposed on your body, like a master shaping a weapon of flesh. You felt your will waver, swept away in this whirlwind of ecstasy and fatigue, but he showed no sign of weakness. On the contrary, his blows accelerated, feverish, almost desperate, as if he were seeking to engrave this moment in eternity, to mark you forever with his essence.

“Sunghoon…” Your moan broke between pain and desire, tiredness and longing, “I’m exhausted…”

But his eyes, dark as a moonless night, yielded nothing. Sunghoon growled, a deep, wild sound filled with possession: "I won't stop until I've put a child inside you."

His hand grew rougher, digging into your hips, his fingers leaving new burning marks on your skin. His thumb slid down to your clit, which he rubbed relentlessly, a cruel, methodical movement, as if he wanted to draw every spark of fire from your bruised body. Each caress triggered electric shocks within you, a delectable pain that made you teeter on the edge.

The pace suddenly slowed, but each thrust was deeper, more violent, slowly tearing at your flesh, tearing you from your senses. You felt his thick member insinuate itself deep inside you, consuming you from the inside out. Sunghoon brought his lips to yours, his hot breaths crashing against your skin, damp with sweat and desire. His lips swallowed you in a voracious kiss, a collision of storms and sweetness, a silent promise of domination and eternity.

Your tongue was captured, swept into a wild dance, his harsh breath playing with yours, nibbling, teasing, exploring every corner of your mouth. His body kept grinding into you, penetrating you with an almost inhuman intensity, and you felt the pain mix with the pleasure in a chaotic whirlwind, driving you mad.

Then, suddenly, Sunghoon exploded inside you. His burning seed flowed deep into your flesh, marking your womanhood like an indelible seal. You let out a cry, a wild, vibrant cry, mixed with ecstasy and pain, as your fingers clung to his shoulders, trying not to sink into the surge.

Your moans intertwined, a bestial, heartbreaking melody, as Sunghoon curled his tongue around yours, nibbling gently and cruelly at the intimate connection. When he finally pulled away, a trickle of drool still connected your lips, a clear sign of the hurricane you had just experienced.

Sunghoon then placed his hand on your face, brushing back the strands of hair stuck to your forehead by sweat, caressing your burning skin with a tenderness that was almost incongruous in the midst of this passionate chaos. Your eyes fluttered open, surprised to regain your sight, faced with this unexpected softness in the midst of the storm. You looked at him, a tired and sincere smile illuminating your bruised face, as if the simple fact of having survived this ordeal was enough to justify your reason for being.

“That really would have been the best way to die, you know…” you whispered, your voice shaky, almost breaking, a breath mixed with a fragile laugh as you felt your pussy instinctively tighten around his still-tense member inside you.

Sunghoon responded with a raspy growl, holding you tighter, his possessiveness turning into a protective hug. "Stop talking nonsense." His voice, low and vibrant, was a silent declaration of power and love. Without letting go, he lifted you into his arms, carrying you like a precious conquest to his room, his kingdom.

You moan with every touch, the constant pressure of his manhood against you waking every dormant nerve, leaving you vulnerable, captive, drunk on Sunghoon.

"And help me make a child with my wife," he whispered in your ear, stealing a burning kiss, a carnivorous smile stretching his lips. Sunghoon sensed your nascent protest, smothering it with a deeper, more demanding kiss, where desire and promise intertwined, inseparable.

So you lay, night after night, day after day, enveloped in the thick darkness of that room where every breath, every shiver, every bead of sweat was offered to the black fire that consumed your bodies. The supposed excuse of conception was only a fragile veil masking the raw truth: Sunghoon wanted your body, your soul, your essence, without restraint or hindrance, and you let yourself be devoured, because nothing else could bring you such intensity, such release.

Your hands traced invisible marks on his warm skin, your fingers running over every curve, every hollow, every scar, while his mercilessly explored your exposed flesh. Your bodies spoke a silent language, a wild and sensual dance where domination and submission intertwined endlessly, melting into a gentle and absolute violence.

And in this carnal chaos, this storm of shadow and light, you found a strange peace—being both broken and whole, devastated and uplifted, alive beyond anything you had ever known.

Taglist : @weepingsweep

[ceilidho]

This is in no way of hating but i want to know why do you enjoy writing noncon/rape? When I first downloaded tumblr which was couple of months ago i was surprised by the amount of noncon fics here. I eventually came to enjoy them which makes me question myself. Whenever i read a noncon fic and enjoy it i feel like im betraying women who actually went through those traumatic events. Plus I actually don't really like dark romance books? I love cod dead dove and that is mainly because i really love the characters and the authors are so talented. I rambled so much and i hope you don't get this in the wrong way i don't mean to hate AT ALL i love the stuff you write. Maybe i shouldn't think too much and let myself enjoy what im reading lol

first of all, no worries! i wasn't sure about your tone/intentions at first, but by the end i was totally fine with the question.

i actually don't mind talking about this stuff - i just sometimes avoid it on main because i prefer chatting about it privately.

second, i'm no psychologist or sociologist, so i probably won't be able to give you the most satisfactory answer, but i think there are a lot of different reasons. i can only name a few. one thing i should mention right off the bat is that rape fantasies are very normal (and this is true whether you're a survivor of SA or not) and writing/reading fiction can be a safe way to process those thoughts/feelings.

one of prevailing reasons is, of course, that many survivors of SA use noncon/dubcon literature/art as a way of processing their experiences and taking ownership of their trauma.

and look, people are going to go back and forth on this point (i've seen it all before - many people refuse to believe that engaging with noncon lit/art is helpful, and in fairness, it's NOT helpful for everyone because every person is different), but at the end of the day, if a survivor tells you "writing/reading this was helpful in my recovery" then that's that!

additionally, for many women and non-binary folk (i can only speak as a cis woman, but i'm sure this is a shared lived experience across many different people), we're also taught from a very young age to suppress our sexual desires / that being open about our sexuality is morally reprehensible and shameful. and a lot of people carry that shame for years, impacting them well into adulthood. so dubcon/noncon fantasies can be a way of being able to enjoy sexual scenarios where you don't have to be the initiator, thus taking away some of the emotional weight and shame.

plus, at the end of the day (and im sure many people will disagree with this take, it's something that i'm still figuring out myself), there is a kind of weird underlying consent implicit in dark fics. like, you might be reading a fic or novel that's ostensibly noncon, but you're also actively seeking out that literature (hopefully it's not just sprung on you - i do very much agree with tagging to the fullest extent and my lukewarm take is that I think all books, even traditionally published ones, should come with content/trigger warnings too).

there are a medley of reasons why someone might write or read dark fiction/dark romance. again, i'm just one person and i can only speak from my own experience!

i think at the end of the day, the important thing to realize is that fiction is fake, and as long as the writer appropriately tags their work and ensures that the audience is aware of what they're getting into when they start reading, they're not coercing the reader into something they aren't prepared for.

and it's totally fine if you have limits (like, you can read and enjoy dubcon, but not noncon) or can't engage with the material at all, but it's also unfair to say that it reflects someone's real life values - the same way that we don't say that the people who enjoy crime fiction must love murder.

and the last thing i want to say because this got a bit out of hand lol, is that, yes, for some people dark fiction is genuinely harmful, whether or not they're a survivor. it's not for everyone and that's completely fine and i'm aware of that, which is why i agree that you should tag as much as possible (even if you feel like you're overdoing it sometimes), but someone else's discomfort doesn't give them the right to tell you how to process your own emotions/experiences/desires/etc.

as long as no one's getting hurt, there's no issue as far as i'm concerned. and sorry but, no one's getting hurt by reading a fic or a novel unless the author didn't give proper content warnings - if you "forgot" to read the tags or read anyway DESPITE being warned, im sorry but that's life.

[burst-of-iridescent]

No, Shipping Zutara Is Not Supporting Amatonormativity (Please Use Some Fucking Braincells For Once)

- a treatise by a severely pissed off aroace zutara shipper

since words don’t mean anything anymore (if they ever did on the esteemed piss-on-the-poor website), let’s start with a definition.

amatonormativity: the set of social assumptions that everyone prospers with a romantic relationship, thereby positioning marriage as a universal goal of adult life. amatonormativity forms the basis of several institutional structures that are built to cater to romantic bonds over all others, also manifesting in social pressure on individuals to find a romantic partner by pushing the false narrative that those who do not experience romance are automatically lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. it is usually characterized by the prioritization of romantic love over other forms of love, particularly platonic.

the anti-zutara argument based on this is as follows: wanting zutara to happen is amatonormative because it a) devalues zuko and katara’s platonic bond b) pushes the idea that men and women can’t be friends and c) doesn’t align with the themes of the show, as romantic love was never the point of atla.

i would like to take the time today to tell you that this is some fucking bullshit, for the following reasons:

one, this may come as a shock to some of you, but zutara shippers did not invent the concept of romantic love in avatar: the last airbender. you are more than welcome to criticize the pairings of suki/sokka, katara/aang, mai/zuko, yue/sokka, jin/zuko, jet/katara, and even kanna/pakku for perpetuating amatonormativity through their unnecessary romantic subplots. and if you don’t have anything to say about any of those pairings, then here’s a word for you: hypocrite.

zk shippers are not introducing the taint of romantic love into some kind of wholesome platonic utopia where it never existed. when we say zutara should have been canon, it is a statement that ends with the implicit instead of kat.aang and mai.ko tacked on at the back because if we were going to get a romantic relationship anyway, it might as well have been one that was well-developed, narratively impactful, and thematically relevant.

two, saying zutara is amatonormative is fucking rich when the main “romance” of atla is a three season long struggle to get out of the friendzone. aang’s desire to be in a romantic relationship with katara is one of his primary motivations throughout the show, and not once does either he or the narrative ever entertain the thought that just being katara’s friend might be enough. to the contrary, aang’s crush and the potential of its reciprocation is a fundamental part of how the story gets its audience to invest in both his character and the kat.aang relationship. they want you to want him to get the girl, and that’s the driving force of the ship’s development from start to finish.

you can see the influence of this in the way people defend why kat.aang had to happen: “aang would be crushed!” “it would break aang’s heart!” “aang deserves to be happy!” and that in and of itself is more amatonormative than any version of romantic zutara, as if this idea that aang is somehow doomed to a life of misery and loneliness just because he can’t be with the girl he likes isn’t inherently based on the assumption that platonic love can’t be as meaningful and satisfying as romantic love.

three, let’s be so fucking fr: a show written by cishet men in the early 2000s was not “subverting amatonormativity” by not making zutara happen, especially not when they went for the fucking olympic gold of romantic cliches — the hero gets the girl trope — instead. otherwise, why did the entire show end with an uncomfortably long liplock? if romance would’ve devalued zuko and katara’s platonic bond, then what the everloving fuck happened to their friendship in the comics and the legend of korra?

it is blatantly false to say that zutara shippers are the ones devaluing their platonic bond when the creators did it first. they evidently don’t view zutara’s platonic bond as equal to kat.aang’s romantic one, judging by their treatment of both relationships in the comics and LOK and the fact that they talked about kat.aang “winning” the ship war in the first place. because if the two relationships were of equivalent standing, why would there be a winner and a loser at all?

amatonormativity is baked into the DNA of atla, and while some people choose to reject this framework entirely (zk friendship >>> ka romance anyday), it is also not wrong for zk shippers to be annoyed at the treatment zutara received within the context of said framework. since the creators clearly thought a romantic relationship was better than a platonic one, they could at least have picked the couple that actually made sense instead of adding insult to injury by making that romance kat.aang. it is not amatonormative to acknowledge that zutara was not afforded the distinction it should have been in the eyes of those who wrote it, because it’s obvious that the decision to keep zuko and katara’s relationship platonic wasn’t to respect their friendship, but to position them as inferior to kat.aang.

four, detractors of romantic zutara often argue that their platonic relationship is inherently better & i’ve discussed before why that isn’t the case, but i also hate this argument because it’s perpetuating the very thing that aromantic people are trying to get rid of in the first place: the hierarchization of love. it is not the “gotcha!” you think it is to genuinely state that platonic love is better than romantic love, because it’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of order to categorizing human relationships. the solution to amatonormativity isn’t changing what form of love gets to be at the top of the list — it’s doing away with the hierarchy entirely.

i ship zuko and katara because canon already gave me their friendship. i already know what their platonic relationship looks like and that gives me more room for imagination in developing their romantic one because it’s a place canon didn’t go.

at the end of the day, friendship and romance are just different avenues of exploring intimacy. neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and neither is inherently more problematic. and if you truly believe in dismantling amatonormative beliefs, you would recognize that making a distinction between the two is only perpetuating the problem, not challenging it.

[itsnesss]

𝐤.𝐨. | axel kovacevik × fem!reader

summary | you and axel share a charged moment of undeniable attraction, where the lines between control and desire blur

warnings | fluff, romance, intimacy (implicit/not overly graphic

word count | 1.9 k

author's note | it would help me a lot if you liked, commented and reposted so that more people read what I write and don't forget to follow me, thanks ᡣ𐭩

The room is bathed in a soft dim light, barely illuminated by the flickering lamp next to the bed. It's as if the air between you and Axel has become thick. Every movement of his seems to trigger a chain reaction inside you, as if electricity is floating between the two of you, barely contained. Every glance that crosses, every sigh, makes your heart race. You can’t stop thinking about how he makes you feel. It’s not just desire; it’s the tension, that charged energy that pushes you closer to him.

Axel is only a few steps away, watching you with that characteristic intensity, as if he could read you like a book. The two of you know this moment has been waiting to arrive. And although you try to keep calm, a part of you has already surrendered. There’s no turning back. You don’t want there to be.

"Are you sure about what you want?" His voice is low, challenging. Every word of his feels like a challenge to your resistance. He knows. He knows you’ve crossed the line, that at this moment, there’s no room for regret.

"I’ve never been more sure," you reply, your voice trembling slightly. The simple fact of looking at him makes you feel as if you're about to fall, and although the idea of losing control scares you, you can’t help it. There’s something in his presence, something in the way he looks at you, that makes you feel alive, more than ever.

It’s not just a kiss he gives you, it’s fire. It’s a direct hit to the heart, as if you’re being knocked down in the best possible way. Axel’s lips are soft at first, almost cautious, as if he’s gauging your reaction, but soon they become more urgent, more intense, as if he’s losing control too. The space between you vanishes, and every caress of his is like an electric shock running through your body.

He grabs you by the waist, and with a smooth movement, he pushes you onto the bed. The mattress sinks under your weight, and he positions himself above you, never stopping to look at you. The closeness of his body, his warmth, completely envelops you. All you can hear is the sound of both of you breathing, raggedly, as if air is the only thing separating you. There are no more words, only the brush of his hands exploring your body, the delicate touch of his fingers sliding across your skin, as if he’s trying to memorize every inch.

"You think you have control," you murmur, feeling how your body reacts to his closeness. It’s a challenge, but also an invitation to follow the game that’s begun. You resist, but deep down you know you can’t, you don’t want to.

He smiles, that mischievous grin you know means he’s about to take control without hesitation. "I don’t have it, but I know you’ll want it," he replies, his voice full of a confidence that leaves you speechless. You feel his hands moving skillfully across your body, removing each piece of clothing that separates him from you, and the sensation of being completely vulnerable before him makes you lose your breath. It’s a dangerous game, one you know you won’t win, but you don’t want to win. Not now. Not with him.

"Stay," you whisper, your words so soft they almost get lost in the air. It’s not just a request; it’s a need. The desire that burns between you is undeniable, like a fire consuming everything it touches.

He leans down toward you, his lips tracing a fiery line across your neck. Every kiss he leaves on your skin is like a direct hit to your heart, and you can’t help it. You surrender to him with an intensity that scares you, but also draws you in. There’s nothing in the world you want more at this moment than to lose yourself in him, to let yourself be swept away by every one of his movements, by each of his kisses.

"You make me lose control," you whisper, and although your words are simple, you feel they carry more weight than they should. Because in that instant, you realize you’re not playing anymore. It’s not a power struggle, it’s not a game of who can resist more. It’s just you and him, in this moment, where the rules have disappeared. And it’s a feeling you don’t want to end.

You feel Axel pull you closer, his hands gripping you with a force that makes you feel both safe and vulnerable at the same time. He’s not playing gently. He doesn’t stop. Every move he makes pulls you further and further toward a fall with no brakes. And although in another context, at another time, you might have held back, now you let yourself go. You want him too much to stop.

"You’re out of my league," you murmur without thinking, but you feel it in every word, in every beat of his heart against yours. You know it’s true, yet you don’t care. Because in this moment, in this room, the differences dissolve. It’s just the now, the present. And that’s what really matters.

"And yet, you’re here," Axel replies, his smile filled with silent arrogance, but also with a deep gaze you can’t ignore. He has control, at least for now, but you can’t stop following him. Every word of his challenges you, pulls you further into the abyss of desire.

Your breaths mix, and the sound of his hands on your skin is the only thing you can hear. Every caress, every touch, drives you closer to madness. And when you finally give in, when you finally fall, you realize this isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning of something much bigger, something neither you nor he can control.

"You’re going to kill me," you whisper between gasps, but you know you’re saying it in the best possible way. Because every time he comes closer, every time he kisses you, he knocks you down a little more, but somehow, you welcome it.

And in one final sigh, as the world seems to crumble around you, he whispers with a voice full of satisfaction:

"You’re a knockout, baby."

[defectivevillain]

bitten by the love bug

pairing: House/Reader (no explicit romance)

the reader's race and gender are ambiguous; no pronouns or physical descriptors are used.

“House, come on—” you say helplessly, quickly growing frustrated. “You’re rather oblivious, aren’t you?” House interjects, raising a brow at you. One hand rests on his cane while the other is shoved in his pocket. He looks so casual and unbothered, as if he didn’t just jokingly diagnose the patient with love.

word count: 1.3k | ao3 version

I know nothing about canon. okay, thanks. bye.

In the years you’ve spent working for Dr. House, you grow to recognize that he loathes small talk. It’s better for you to just cut right to the chase. He prefers direct and honest communication. So, when your patient’s condition is eluding you, you don’t hesitate to approach him about it.

“My patient’s confusing me,” you say as you enter his office, abandoning any pleasantries. 

Despite your direct remark, the doctor still pays you a bored glance. “Well, if they’re confusing you, then this case must be unsolvable,” House responds, his voice dripping in sarcasm. You roll your eyes. 

“I’m serious,” you maintain, silently commanding him to pay attention. “His symptoms are constantly changing. One moment, he’s dizzy and nauseous; the next, he’s completely fine. His vitals are normal, the tests we ran are normal. No past injuries or illnesses… I don’t get it.”

House hums. He spins his chair ever so slightly, tapping his chin in contemplation.

“Come on, please?” you continue after a few moments of silence. 

“Disgusting.” House’s nose wrinkles and he looks repulsed. “Don’t act like that ever again. Especially not in my office.” You fight off your amusement at that, instead recognizing the implicit agreement. House gets to his feet and stares at you impatiently. “Well? Let’s see this medical anomaly,” he scoffs, clearly disbelieving. You sigh and walk over to the patient’s room. Before you can even open the door of the room for him, House pays a bored glance to the window returning his attention to you. 

“You dragged me all the way over here for this nonsense?” he huffs blandly, not even bothering to take a second look. You’re not quite sure what you expected from him, now that you think about it.  

“What?” you ask skeptically. “Don’t tell me you know what’s wrong already.” House merely took one look at the guy. How could he possibly know what’s wrong?

There’s a beat of silence. A slight smile rises on House’s lips—it seems mocking. “He’s in love,” House states, raising a brow. You’re convinced his amusement is at your expense. Surely this is just one of his jokes. But… you can’t seem to find the punchline. 

“What?” you exclaim. “House, come on—” you say helplessly, quickly growing frustrated. 

“You’re rather oblivious, aren’t you?” House interjects, raising a brow at you. One hand rests on his cane while the other is shoved in his pocket. He looks so casual and unbothered, as if he didn’t just jokingly diagnose the patient with love.  

You grit your teeth, resisting the urge to throttle him. “Just explain, House," you sigh impatiently. You don’t have time for these games.  

“He’s just pretending,” House elaborates, taking another look through the window. “He probably felt somewhat under the weather when he came here. Then he saw you, and started faking his symptoms to get your attention.” He turns his head back to you, his expression a mix of annoyance and boredom. 

You stare at him in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“People often confuse attention from a doctor with romantic attraction,” House rolls his eyes. “It’s desperate and pathetic," he then scoffs darkly.

“That’s—” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose in distress and annoyance. “Are you sure?”

“‘Am I sure?’” he repeats mockingly, rolling his eyes. House doesn’t bother to greet the guy, instead giving him one look and evidently coming to a decision. “It’s a textbook case, really. Normal tests, ever-changing symptoms. He’s dropped the act, since he doesn’t realize you’re standing here," he says to you. 

Then, without warning, House opens the door to the room. He forgoes a greeting. “What are your symptoms, buddy?” he asks the patient with faux politeness. The guy hesitates for a few moments, stumbling and stuttering. House immediately interjects. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’ve been pretending since you got here, just to impress a certain doctor…” The diagnostician trails off and glances at you pointedly. 

The patient doesn’t immediately object. Instead, to your complete surprise, he nods regretfully. 

“Are you serious?” you choke out, the gravity of the situation hitting you now. “You came to the hospital and pretended to be sick… just to waste our time?” you demand. The guy’s shoulders droop and he doesn’t say anything. You look to House for assistance, only to find that he has his arms crossed over his chest and an entertained smile on his face. Damn it, he’s having fun with this. You can hardly focus on that now, though—not through the overwhelming haze of frustration and irritation currently plaguing you. 

Hospitals are always understaffed and lacking resources—Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is no different. The fact that this patient took up space in the already crowded hospital, just to fake his symptoms, infuriates you. He wasted your time—valuable time you could’ve spent helping someone who genuinely needed the help. Your fists clench at your sides.  

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” you repeat incredulously. The patient nods. “You’re feeling fine.” Another nod. He looks embarrassed now. Good. 

You take a slow breath, attempting to hold back your anger. It doesn’t quite work. “Get up,” you order, in a tone far more assertive than the one you usually wield. At his confused look, you repeat yourself and motion impatiently. The guy seems to break out of his stupor and gets up from the bed. “Follow me," you say. 

You feel House’s eyes on your back as you lead the patient out of the room and towards one of the interior exits, away from prying eyes. You don’t want the other patients to think this is how you treat people. You’re just— You’re so frustrated. This guy thinks this is all some sort of joke, that he’s being clever. “Here’s the exit,” you announce, promptly holding the door open and gesturing for him to walk through it. Fortunately, the guy seems to have some tiny sliver of dignity left, because he doesn’t argue. “And don’t bother coming back unless you’re sick or dying,” you finish, immediately closing the door and locking him out of the building. 

You immediately grasp at the handle of the door and take a slow breath, tilting your head down as you attempt to regain your composure. That was a bit harsh. But, at the same time, he deserved it. You can’t condone that kind of behavior—and if you had let it slide, it would’ve likely happened again. 

“That was quite the ruckus,” Dr. House says from a short distance away. He’s staring at the door when the strangest emotion flickers across his face. It’s gone in the blink of an eye, leaving you questioning if you ever really saw it in the first place. 

“No, it was pathetic,” you respond with a shake of your head. You shove your hands in the pockets of your lab coat. “I’m really not in the mood,” you warn House as you walk back towards him. 

He’s silent at your side for a moment, before speaking again. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think you had the guts," House says, a slightly mischievous smile dancing on his lips. “And I’m never wrong.”  

“First time for everything,” you say somewhat breathlessly, feeling almost flustered by the intensity of his scrutiny.

“You’ll have to get used to that kind of thing,” he says flippantly. 

“What?” you ask, blinking at him. You feel as if you’re missing something. The implications of that statement are going over your head. “Why?” 

House stares at you, as if the answer is infuriatingly obvious. “You’re relatively young. Easy on the eyes. Nice enough for people to think they have a chance.” Before you can even begin to comprehend what he just said, he’s continuing to speak. “Now, enough slacking; get back to work. And don’t expect me to bail you out next time.” 

You’re left to stare after his retreating figure in complete disbelief. 

House: "Enough slacking; get back to work." House, internally: Why was that kind of hot…?

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[starryalpacasstuff]

Fire (1996): A Mostly Spoiler Free Pitch Because You Should Watch It Immediately

It's time for "An Indian QL bulldozed past my expectations and I am reeling in awe", Part Two!

A few days ago, @neuroticbookworm told me about Fire, an old lesbian Indian movie she'd been wanting to watch. Me being me, I promptly tracked it down and settled in to watch it.

Very loosely based on the 1942 short story Lihaaf, the movie follows Sita, a newly wed bride who is settling in with her in-laws, which is how she meets Radha, who is married to her husband's brother. Both in unhappy marriages, they find solace and company with each other, quickly falling in love. Length: 1 Hour 40 Minutes TWs: Homophobia, C-word mentioned once, some depictions of domestic violence Release: 1996

The is almost entirely in English, and while one generally expects Bollywood movies to be in Hinglish, it's definitely a conscious choice here, which does make me wonder if the movie was supposed to be promoted to a greater international audience. You can find it here on Youtube, most of the (very few) Hindi dialogues have hard subtitles. I think it's also available on Prime? It wasn't available in India though, which is odd, but I didn't bother investigating. Let me know if anyone can figure anything out about this!

Going into this movie, I expected a melodramatic, emotional movie with a bittersweet tone. I did not expect a biting, incredibly engaging movie with excellent satire, symbolism, discussions of chastity culture, and an incredibly sweet, beautifully written romance. And I was certainly not prepared for how incredibly horny this movie is??? Both in subtle tension and overt sex scenes. There's also partial nudity, which again, completely unexpected. If you're going taboo, go taboo all the way I suppose. It's also very well directed, and while I'm not nearly as good at identifying details like that as some of the people on here, I did pick up on some colour coding and interesting framing. It's just overall packed with little details that I think a lot of us would have a field day analysing.

Honestly, I could talk about the cultural nuances in this movie for hours. Contrary to my assumption about the reasoning behind making the movie fully in English, the movie seems to rely on the viewer's understanding of North Indian customs to deliver a lot of it's messages, particularly with its satire, more on that below. While I don't think it's necessary to enjoy the movie, it definitely does add some meat to the story. Then again, I'm a biased party, so it'll be hard to determine just how many messages may be lost to someone from outside of India without someone to compare notes with (this is me shamelessly trying to get you to watch the movie). Honestly, I'd be 100% down to write a more detailed, spoiler-including post that goes into the implicit nuances if people are interested.

There's two main selling points for the movie; the incredible way it shuts down purity and chastity ideology and the absolutely adorable relationship between Radha and Sita. The movie is set on ruthlessly tearing down and emphasizing the ridiculousness of purity culture. A lot of the messaging is indirect and uses metaphors, but there's also several explicit scenes addressing the issue. It's one of the main themes of the movie and I'm almost convinced the real reason it's titled 'Fire' is the sheer number of burns it dishes out on this subject. The romance portion of this movie is one of the thing's that completely defied my expectations. It wasn't sad and dramatic, it was heartfelt and silly and adorable. There's several scenes of the two subtly flirting, laughing together and just being lowkey in love. But that's not to say there's no emotional depth—they're also there for each other and are quite vulnerable with each other.

The movie used a lot of metaphors, but my favourites were the almost satirical representation of mythological stories. In a religion as diverse as Hinduism, every holiday has two dozen stories behind it and each story has two dozen versions, so it's to be expected that you'll find a number of problematic or otherwise kind of ridiculous stories in the mix. The stories were told completely seriously, but the context of the movie highlights their absurd facets in a truly brilliant way. I'm not going to give too much away, but I will say, it was a delight to watch the juxtaposition of the myths and the storyline of the movie, particularly it's ties to the purity culture discussion. You'll understand when you watch it. I'm not turning this into a Hindu mythology lesson (yet) but one interesting tidbit is that Radha and Sita are both names of mythological figures; namely the partners of two of the most worshipped avatars of the god Vishnu: Krishna and Rama respectively. And I was overjoyed to find that their names do have relevance to the metaphors in the story, particularly Sita's.

When the movie was first released, there were massive protests against it, I'm talking hundreds of people storming into theatres to destroy them and drive away audiences. I don't know what to say here beyond this, but what I will say is that I think Fire is an amazing movie that absolutely does not deserve to be lost to the sands of time. I hope you give it a shot, and if you do, tag me in any posts you make about it!

Tagging people who seemed interested in recs from my last post, let me know if you'd rather I not tag you!

@lurkingshan @impala124 @bengiyo @letgomaggie @winnysatang

@watertightvines @nutcasewithaknife @blorbingqls @twig-tea

@waitmyturtles @cryingatships @benkaben @usertoxicyaoi

@befuddledcinnamonroll @flyingrosebeetle

[microwave-core]

Lifeline

Cynthia x Fem! Reader

You’ve had a crush on your dear childhood friend Cynthia for as long as you can remember. Facing against each other as champions reminds you of that fact.

SO, I know the Masters 8 thing from the anime was a part of gen 8, but I’ve decided to make reader a champion in Paldea, kind of representing the region on Geeta’s behalf, in place of Alain. Lumiose Conference or whatever my ass. 

Looking back, you were always meek as a child. A little shy, a little nervous when talking or the center of attention, a little shaky when issuing your pokemon commands. Not that it mattered, not when you always had your dear Cynthia to rely on. The young girl you had met in your mutual, sleepy home of Celestic Town. 

Maybe she wasn’t as good as you remember her being at the time, not with her current level of strength, but as kids she always seemed so, so… confident. Unstoppable. And maybe that really is just your nostalgic, crush-induced rose-tinted glasses talking, but that’s how you saw her.

You always believed she could be champion. More than that. Perhaps even the best in the world. Something other’s didn’t believe at the time. Who would have thought that some spunky ten year old from a backwater town and nothing but a bumbling Gible at her side would become such an unbelievable powerhouse?

But you knew, even way back when. Even before either of you had your first pokemon, you knew she was destined for something great. Not just because of some implicit skill or natural born talent, but because of her unrelenting determination and resolve. A feeling that only solidified in the depths of your heart the day she ran up to you, announcing the hatching of the egg she was entrusted with. 

You had begun your journeys side by side, vowing to journey across the region, collecting gym badges, and becoming champions together. And yeah, maybe there can only be one champion of the region, but neither of you cared about that. You were young, full of joy and excitement and energy. Gible by her side, Swablu by your own.

It was apparent to everyone that she was stronger than you. Her team and battle prowess were higher, her confidence soaring high above your own. Not that you cared. Well, okay, that’s a lie. It did bother you a little, admittedly, but in the way that spurred you on to be stronger. Be better. The kind that made you work towards her in the race to the finish line. You weren’t a sore loser, she wasn’t a sore winner, you both worked to make the other stronger.

But by the time you both managed to collect each and every one of Sinnoh’s gym badges, your interest in becoming the region’s champion waned. Not that you didn’t want to try, but because you knew that, even if you did try you would surely lose to Cynthia. Her radiant confidence, her cool and collected nature, her dazzling smile… 

Yes, you had feelings for her. Major ones at that. Ones that obviously stemmed all the way back to your childhood. It was apparent to everyone in your old hometown. The way you followed behind her like a lost Shinx, the way that you were hooked on her every word, the way heat crawled up your face and traveled through every inch of your body whenever she smiled or laughed or did… much of anything, honestly. 

As kids, though, neither of you cared all that much. Romance and kissing were icky to you both, things that adults did that you would stick your tongues out at. That didn’t stop your parents from teasing you about getting married to her one day, or her grandmother from jokingly calling you her granddaughter-in-law.

When you went on a journey together, those feelings only grew stronger. You wanted so desperately to hold her hand, to huddle together for warmth when camping out under the stars, to kiss her softly and all of that other mushy stuff you once found gross. If kissing her would give you cooties, you would embrace them with open arms.

You knew it was obvious, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it felt like it was due to everyone at home knowing. Regardless, you felt hopeless. Did Cynthia feel the same? Did she catch on to the feelings you’ve harbored since you were kids and was just too nice to say anything about it? Was she too dense to notice? Did she even care about romance? You didn’t know. You didn’t want to find out. You’d rather keep her as a friend than ruin things when confessing.

Pinning for her was enough for you. 

Unfortunately, some time after your journey for badges concluded, you had to deliver to her awful news. Your family was moving to another region, to Paldea, to a place where she wouldn’t be with you. You stewed on telling her for a few days. Even if she didn’t share your feelings, you were still her friend, her best friend. Losing you was going to hurt. Your Altaria, who had long since evolved from the small, clumsy Swablu you once knew, was there for comfort, at least. 

Cynthia quickly noticed something was up, you told each other everything (most things, anyways), and she could tell something was weighing on your mind. And, as expected, she was devastated upon learning the news.

The last day in Sinnoh, the two of you spent together. Going on a trip down memory lane, visiting your favorite spots, returning the places you caught each of your pokemon… She hugged you tightly at the end of the day, whispering softly into your hair about how much she would miss you. You wanted desperately for her to confess some feelings, to reveal that she too was so desperately in love, but it never came. You left early the next morning, sharing one last hug, her vowing to get even stronger and become champion, just for you.

Letters were sent back and forth, turning into texts and calls as you got older. Even if it wasn’t in person, you still talked and chatted and told each other as much as you could. It wasn’t the same, but it was something, enough to keep her in your life. Enough to keep the flame in your heart alive. 

That’s why you went out on another journey, determined to collect another set of badges, to become the champion, and to stand on even footing with her. Your resolve was only bolded when you watched her become the new champion of Sinnoh. From behind the TV screen, of course. Her and that Garchomp, the sweet yet mighty dragon you watched grow stronger and stronger each day alongside her beautiful and capable trainer…

Unlike other regions, there was no tournament for the top spot, instead having a title, a class, just for people capable of defeating Paldea’s strongest. La Primera gave you lots of trouble, but your team was strong, much stronger than when you first arrived in the region, and you couldn’t back down from the challenge. If you lost to her, how could you ever beat your Cynthia?

The phone call you had after the fight with her was one of the most exciting calls you’ve ever had, loudly and happily proclaiming your victory, and she couldn’t be more happy for you. Even if you weren’t on her level at the time, Cynthia knew you were strong as well, and she believed in you just as much as you did in her. If being champion didn’t keep her so busy, she would have been here with you, to celebrate your accomplishment in person..

So when she heard you would be in the Masters 8 tournament to represent your new home, she knew she had to be there. To see you in person for the first time in years. To see just how strong you had become. And, right now, staring at you from across the field, tension high and adrenaline higher, the wait to see you was worth it.

“You’ve changed so much since we’ve last seen each other… but I have no intention of losing here.”

God, even her voice alone was enough to make your heart want to explode.

For you, the current moment was exciting and also terrifying. You had longed for this kind of moment for years, For over a decade at this point, and it was finally happening. A chance to show the woman you’ve pinned for for years just how strong you could be. Your fights with Steven and Iris before were incredible challenges of strength and skill, but neither had such intense feelings on the line.

“I, uh. I don’t intend on losing either!”

Not your finest moment. Not very cool sounding. You couldn’t care less about the hundreds of thousands of people watching, the idea of looking uncool in front of Cynthia made your nerves spike, but the angelic, albeit small laugh that fell from her lips as a result of your words might have made it worth it-

No. no time to think like that. You couldn’t be distracted by her marvelous presence when so much was on the line.

And so, you both exchanged words as your pokemon began exchanging blows, praising each other’s strategies and throwing in bits and pieces of trash talk to please the crowd every now and then. Not that pleasing the crowd was even on your mind, not much was, honestly. You were so focused on the battle and Cynthia that your mind circled around to being filled with white noise.

In the end, it was mutual destruction. You were both left with your last pokemon, both left with your starters, with no gimmicks at your disposal. Her Garchomp and your Altaria clashed against one another, each move kicking up dust and debris from the battlefield, until the two rammed into each other with the remainder of their energy.

Both of them were done for, but Altaria fell before Garchomp, who followed almost immediately after. A photo finish, a battle that came right down to the wire. A battle that proved you were evenly matched. Coming this far only to lose hurt, sure, but knowing that you were as strong as Cynthia filled that wound and more.

The blaring noise of the commentators and crowd were a blur for you, and likely Cynthia, too. You had knelt down next to your fallen companion, thanking her for all of her work, praising her for pushing it to the limit, and returning her to her ball for a well deserved rest. Cynthia was right in front of you when you looked up, smiling and extending a hand.

Your breath hitches as she pulls you back up on your feet, the feeling of her lovely soft hand making your tired mind nearly short circuit. Unfortunately, she retracts her hand, only to place it on the back of your shoulder, leading you both off of the battlefield into the privacy of the hall between the public eye and back rooms.

“You were incredible out there.”

Her tone is gentle, and probably would have been quieter if it weren’t for the echoes of the roaring crowd from outside.

“Me? Oh, you were the real star! You… you won, after all!”

“You’ve always been too modest. You drove me against the wall back there, not to mention the other trainers you championed over before me.”

You scratch the back of your neck, stumbling through your words, mumbling out a quick thanks. Embarrassed, but oh so warm on the inside. A silence came over you both, not an uncomfortable one, per say, but one underlined with tension, as if neither of you knew what to say. Unsure of where to start.

“You know, it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. There’s a cafe around here that we could go to-”

“I’m in love with you.”

The words barrel out of your mouth before you could stop them. The pounding in your chest was too intense to ignore. Years of built up feelings finally boiling up to the surface.

“I’m… come again?”

Her cheeks were painted an adorable baby pink, for once in her life unsure of what to say. 

“I… I love you. I think I always have, and I just… I don’t think I can stand it anymore. Knowing that I’ve finally caught up to you, that I could almost beat you back there, it… I just can’t hold back anymore”

You shut your eyes tightly. Even if her expression was so lovely and perfect and one you wanted to burn into your eyes to cherish for forever and ever, you couldn’t bear to see it potentially distort into rejection. The constant thump thump thump of your heart was deafening, filling your ears, overtaking the sounds of the cheering crowd, of the outside world. Her hand on your shoulder tightens slightly as she utters out your name, the syllables falling off her slips sounding like the sweetest song in your mind.

“I’m… I’m flattered.”

“You don’t have to soften the b-blow. Just say you don’t feel the same if you have toI… we can still be friends.”

Your shoulders slump ever so slightly, trying your absolute hardest to keep yourself together.

“That’s not it.”

“It… it’s not?”

Opening your eyes, you see the sickeningly sweet smile on her face, eyes pooling with warmth and crinkling. So sweet and genuine.

“You’ve worked so hard to get here today, I don’t need you to tell me to know. I’ve always known you were strong, seeing you so full of confidence was so wonderful, so…”

“So..?”

“Attractive.”

“Oh! Um, haha… That means a lot. From you.”

Your string of babbling is cute off by her laugh, soft hand leaving your shoulder and instead landing on your cheek, caressing it softly.

“How about we just take things slow for now, alright? Go out once all of the celebration ends and see how things go?”

“That… I’d love that. A lot.”

“Perfect. Oh, I just know you’ll love the place I have in mind. It has some of the best ice cream I’ve had in my whole life. You can get as much as you want, my treat.”

“It’s a date then! A.. a date.”

You can’t help the giddy smile on your face, or the fit of giggles bubbling in your chest, or the way your mind runs in circles because you’re getting the chance to be with the woman who’s been on your mind since you were a child. Her own smile brightens even further, patting your cheek before once again taking your hand in hers, walking through the rest of the hall.

“My heart has been desperate to claw its way out of my chest to engrave itself next to your own for years.”

“Hmm? I didn’t quite catch that.” “Oh, it’s, uh… nothing. Nothing at all.”

You can take it slow for now. Keep all of the feelings and thoughts in your heart contained for just  a little bit longer, knowing that you could bare your soul for her to see in full one day. For now, a simple date was all you could ever ask for.